Pastry Custard or Cream

Ingredients:—Four ounces of flour, four ounces of sugar, six yolks of eggs, two ounces of butter, one pint of cream or milk, one ounce of ratafias, a spoonful of orange-flower water, and a very little salt.

Mix the flour, sugar, and salt, with two whole eggs, in a stewpan with a wooden spoon; then add the cream and the butter, and stir the whole over the stove-fire until it boils: it must then be well worked together, so as to make it smooth. Withdraw the spoon, and after putting the lid on the stewpan, place the cream in the oven, or on a slow stove-fire partially smothered in ashes, that it may continue to simmer gently for about twenty minutes; the cream must then be put out into a basin, and the bruised ratafias, the yolks of eggs, and the orange-flower water must be added; after this put four ounces of butter into a small stewpan on the fire, and as soon as it begins to fritter, and has acquired a light-brown colour (which gives to it the sweet flavour of nuts), add it also to the cream and let the whole be well mixed. Use this cream to garnish various kinds of pastry according to directions given in the several articles for which it is intended.