My Great Grandmother’s Custard
Everyone has that one recipe that defines their childhood. Growing up as a little girl in Kansas City, Missouri, this simple nutmeg custard was that dish for me. My great grandmother Mary, or Meme as we called her, was a truly great cook. Sure, she was a beautiful, classy lady but she also lived on a lake and drove a pontoon boat with a Budweiser in her hand. In every custard she presented me with, there was always one bite missing. She would say “a mouse had gotten into it.” She was the mouse! I understand this now as quality control. When I graduated from culinary school, my grandma gave me notebooks full of her mother’s recipes. I scoured all the handwritten notes and scraps of old Kansas City Star newspaper clippings for THE custard recipe but no starred or dog eared pages to be found. Did she not think this should have been written down, highlighted and laminated? I couldn’t find it anywhere. What a little trickster. After another search through scraps of paper, I did find an unassuming clipping of a “Get Well Custard” from a 1993 edition of Reminisce Magazine. Just 5 ingredients and nutmeg on top.That was it! The irony that the recipe was from a nostalgic magazine called Reminisce is not lost on me. Being me, I used freshly grated nutmeg and a few other tweaks of my own.
Meme always baked at least three pies for Thanksgiving along with plenty of what I affectionately call “old lady recipes”. You know the ones that get passed along from church lady cookbooks with way too much sugar and ingredients like shortening and miracle whip? Lots of ambrosia salad and pickles wrapped in cream cheese and dried beef. I found some truly appalling and hilarious recipes in Meme’s treasure box. What exactly are “ham balls” and why did everything call for dried mustard? Beneath the mountains of cheese whiz and miracle whip, there were gems like the Broccoli Cheese Casserole I grew up on. I don’t know exactly what a Brandy Slush is but you can bet I’m going to find out.
Custard, coincidentally is incredibly British; just like me. I grew up carrying around a difficult to pronounce German maiden name thinking I was mostly German with a dash of English. After my Ancestry.com research, I now know that I am mostly English, Scottish and Irish. Baked custards of milk, eggs and honey have roots in the Middle Ages and maybe even date back to Ancient Rome. One thing’s for certain, the British have always loved dairy based dishes and especially sweets spiced with nutmeg. At one time, nutmeg was one of the most desired and therefore most expensive spices in the world. The hunt for better access to trading routes for spices like nutmeg even sparked the age of exploration, leading to the discovery of America. So much of what I write here is about food history but this recipe is my personal food history and I’m honored to share the stories of the strong women who came before me. I’ve seen similar recipes of “Get Well Custard” online and they all say to bake in a large dish for 50-60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Either they’re all living in a fantasy world or using the shallowest dish in the world because it takes plenty of time in the oven for a firm custard. Even in the smaller ramekins, it takes almost an hour and I don’t dare put a knife in because there is absolutely no way it’s coming out clean. I did add an extra egg to help firm it up. Maybe that mouse bite was really about testing for doneness. Either way, I hope Meme is proud.
Meme’s Custard
Ingredients
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 4 cups whole milk
- freshly grated nutmeg
Instructions
- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees.
- In a mixing bowl, lightly beat the eggs.
- Whisk in sugar, salt and vanilla.
- In a glass measuring cup, microwave milk for 2 minutes.
- Gently pour about a cup of the warm milk into the bowl of eggs and sugar. Whisk well, then combine the rest of the egg mix.
- Use the measuring cup to pour the contents into a 1-1/2 quart round baking dish or 8 smaller ramekins. Grate nutmeg on the tops of all the custard.
- Place dishes of custard into a larger baking dish. Fill the baking dish with hot water surrounding the custard dishes. Very carefully place everything in the oven. It will be very full and heavy. You can pour the hot water into the large dish on the oven rack to prevent spilling. Be careful taking it out as well, making sure not to spill water into the custard.
- If cooking in one large dish, it will need at least an hour and a half in the oven, maybe even 2 hours depending on how deep your dish is. With the smaller ramekins, bake for 55-60 minutes. Bake until the edges are golden brown. They will still be quite jiggly. Allow to cool at room temperature. It will firm as it cools. Cool in the fridge before serving.