National Chocolate Custard Day on May 3rd each year celebrates a delicious pudding-like dessert enjoyed by many.
- Pastry chefs and home cooks alike make custards by blending eggs with milk or cream and heating the mixture either on the stove or in the oven.
- Since custards come in a variety of consistencies, you can choose the one that best fits your dessert preference. For example, they range from a thin liquid-like a creme Anglaise to a firm creme brulee.
- Mixtures of milk and eggs thickened by heat have long been part of French cuisine. Custards baked in pastry (custard tarts) were very popular in the Middle Ages.
- Custard bases may also be used for quiches and other savory foods.
- Due to the fact that it is a very fine organic powder, custard powder is explosive.
- A Swedish restaurant used to take the skin off custard that had been left for too long and sold it to customers as their “Speciality pancake.”
- Flan, or crème caramel, is a custard baked in a dish coated with caramelized sugar that forms a sauce when the custard is unmolded.
- For crème brûlée, the baked custard is sprinkled with sugar that is caramelized under a broiler or with a hot iron called a salamander. The sugar forms a thin, crisp shell over the custard.
- Frozen custard is a cold dessert similar to ice cream. It is usually kept at a warmer temperature compared to ice cream and typically has a denser consistency.
- Savory custards are sometimes encountered, the most notable being quiche, a French tart with a filling of custard flavored with cheese, onions, ham or bacon, or chopped vegetables.
- Custard is ancient. The idea of cooking milk together with eggs to thicken it goes back at least to Roman times; it’s listed in Apicius. It’s probably far older than that.
- The name “custard” derives from “croustade”, which refers to the crust in which the dish was baked.
- Custards baked in pastry (custard tarts) were very popular in the Middle Ages.
- In the 17th century, fruit creams became popular and it was about this time that custards began to be made in individual dishes or bowls rather than as fillings for a crust.
- The first ballistic custard pie was discharged by Mabel Normand in the direction of Fatty Arbuckle in A Noise from the Deep (USA 1913).
- The most custard eaten in three minutes is 5.44 kg (12 lb) and was achieved by Molly Schuyler (USA) at the Dish Nation / Kidd Kraddick Studios in Irving, TX, USA, on 25 April 2014.
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