Talk:Custard

Differntiation

The previous version of this article didn't distinguish between custard (thickened only with egg) and pastry cream (thickened with both egg and starch). It also seems to include blancmange as a kind of custard though it includes no egg at all, but is thickened with starch (which would make it a pudding), or with gelatin. My American and French references (McGee, Larousse Gastronomique, Kamman), and for that matter the OED all agree that custard does not contain starch. Nonetheless, I will assume that this is an English idiosyncracy, and so I have left it in.--Macrakis 22:55, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Custard science

i was watching the new show Brainiac on G4 yesturday, and they claimed to have a man that could walk on the delicious dessert delight. After filling a swimming pool with custard that had been made in cement mixers, the man WALKED ON THE CUSTARD! Custard is normally a goo-like liquidy dessert, but when starch is used in the mixture, the custard changes. When the custard is at rest it retains its gooey, liquid traits, but when force or sudden pressure is applied, the custard becomes a solid. Thus if you take sudden, jerking steps you can, in fact, walk across custard as if you were some sort of custard jesus. (excuse the analogy) There is some sort of term for liquids that behave like solids when force is applied. if anyone knows this, please tell me. sept.3, 2005 --Samus

The word is 'thixotropic'.

I saw that programme. What they were using was not custard, just a mixture of custard powder and cold water in the right quantities. It is the cornstarch in British custard powder that makes it behave that way (see the description of a Non-Newtonian fluid). If you actually made the 'custard' properly (i.e . cooked it so the starch absorbed the water and the granules became properly gelated) I do not believe it would behave like this. So I don't think this bit of 'trivia' really belongs on this page. In fact, 'custard powder' probably deserves a page by itself because what you make from it is not custard in the true sense. It has no eggs - only the cornstarch thickens it. It is really just a sweetened white sauce with yellow colouring. --Rich 08:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

The current article already says:

Instant and ready-made 'custards' are also marketed, though they are not true custards if they are not thickened with egg. See Bird's Custard, for instance.

If there are other brands, I suppose it would be worthwhile having a page on custard powders. --Macrakis 17:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm removing the custard "science", since it is totally misleading (that is to say, not true). ::Didactylos 22:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to close out this discussion, note that some time ago I added a section on "physical properties" which discusses both the properties of cooked egg custard and the properties of an uncooked suspension of custard powder. This should answer questions about "walking on custard". --Macrakis 19:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

History?

I would like to know more about the history of custard -- who first used it, how long ago, and how it differed from the form we know today. Does anyone have any information on this? 81.79.56.85 13:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thixotropic?

"Thixotropic" was the first word that came to mind to me, too...but it means just the opposite of what you're looking for. It means a gel-like substance that temporarily liquifies under stress. (Ketchup is a good example...if you shake the bottle first, it pours.) I found one web page that claimed that "Isotropic" had the meaning you are looking for, but definitions of "isotropic" from other sources failed to back this up.Ormewood 23:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The word you are looking for is "rheopectic". (unsigned comment by Ormewood 20 October 2008)

No, as the article says, cooked custard is thixotropic (gets less viscous as you stir it); uncooked starch (including custard powder) suspended in water in the right proportions is dilatant (gets more viscous as you stir it); and neither is rheopectic (q.v.). --macrakis (talk) 00:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Separate DAB line

I put a separate dab for Bird's Custard back in; reason being that in the UK, this *is* what most people mean by "custard". Thus it's likely that (a) Many people will search for "custard" when they had the Bird's type in mind, and (b) They may not even realise that there's a difference.

I believe that it's better to point this out (very briefly) at the start, rather than expecting them to read through an article which doesn't actually cover what they were looking for. It's even possible that unless they read to the end, they may be misled into thinking that the Bird's type is egg-based. Fourohfour 14:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

DAB rewrite

I rewrote Macrakis's rewrite of the dab

This article focuses on true custards, thickened with egg. For imitation custards thickened with starch, see Bird's Custard.

Yes, I know that starch is more general than cornflour (AKA cornstarch, same thing, different name). Unless powdered custards are being made with other forms of starch, why be less precise? The "imitation" wording is kind of loaded and may be misleading; in Britain, "custard" refers more often to the cornflour-based version anyway, it's not really meant as an "imitation".

I've rewritten it again to avoid it being misleading, but to remove the problems above. Fourohfour 20:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your collaboration.

Birds Custard Powder apparently uses only cornflour as thickener,[1], but the instant variety is made with an unspecified "modified starch" as well as other thickeners (sodium carboxy methyl cellulose, carrageenan).[2] I don't know what other brands do.

I'm not quite sure what to do about the terminology. To my mind, if it doesn't have eggs, it isn't custard (see references to various cookbooks and reference books above). And Bird's surely was an imitation originally -- Bird's goal, according to the story, was to imitate egg-based custard without the eggs his wife couldn't tolerate. (By the way, I wonder if we have solid sources for this story, or if it was just made up as a way to make a cheap substitute acceptable to the market....) But I guess there's been semantic drift in the UK/Commonwealth.... I haven't been able to find a legal definition of "custard" for those jurisdictions, but it appears that "custard powder" is starch-based (not egg-based). Interestingly, the regulations prohibit the use of the word "egg" or of pictures of eggs on the label to avoid misleading people....

Perhaps we should have an article on "custard powder" separate from that on Bird's. There are other brands now.... --Macrakis 22:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't find a US "Standard of Identity" for custard, but the standard of identity for frozen custard does require egg content. I suspect (but am not certain) that it would be considered fraudulent to sell "custard" (as opposed to "custard powder") in the US that did not contain eggs. --Macrakis 22:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

No doubt; as you said yourself, the "custard powder" type of custard is probably a UK/Commonwealth thing. Anyway, I rewrote the dab to simply mention "custard powder", which is probably enough. Fourohfour 10:04, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

crème anglaise

Got rid of "confusingly called crème anglaise" at the beginning as

A) I don't believe it is confusing.

B) Consistency. No mention of confusion is made of the Italian name, which is also "English Cream" --garryq 12:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone apparently changed the original wording, which was "confusingly called simply crème" (which makes it sound like dairy cream) to "confusingly called crème anglaise", which of course made nonsense of the comment. I have corrected it. --Macrakis 18:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

pudding, puddink

In quite a few languages (notably Eastern European and American 'English') custard seems to be known as "pudding" or a local phonetic approximation thereof. Does anyone else find this curious and is there a significant explaination? Confusion over the meaning of the word "pudding", perhaps a shortening of "custard pudding" into "pudding" rather than "custard" occured somewhere in trade history? This is one of those little linguistic things that's always puzzled me. --JamesTheNumberless 15:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the issue is here. Custard is a kind of pudding thickened with egg. The confusion goes the other way, too: in the UK, they refer to a kind of pudding thickened with starch as "custard" (see discussion of Bird's Custard -- which is not an egg custard, but a starch pudding -- above). --Macrakis 16:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Granted there are many definitions of pudding but for how long has the definition of pudding which includes custard, been in existance, and which came first? That fact that bird's is not a true custard does not explain why in some cultures, true custard is called pudding - who decided that custard was a type of pudding? --JamesTheNumberless 14:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Pudding is a very broad term. OED says:

A preparation of food of a soft or moderately firm consistency, in which the ingredients, animal or vegetable, are either mingled in a farinaceous basis (chiefly of flour), or are enclosed in a farinaceous ‘crust’ (cf. DUMPLING), and cooked by boiling or steaming. Preparations of batter, milk and eggs, rice, sago, tapioca, and other farinaceous substances, suitably seasoned, and cooked by baking, are now also called puddings.

The earliest use (connecting this with 1 [pudding = a kind of sausage/haggis]) apparently implied the boiling of the composition in a bag or cloth (pudding-bag or -cloth), as is still often done; but the term has been extended to similar preparations otherwise boiled or steamed, and finally to things baked, so that its meaning and application are now rather indefinite.

So apparently "pudding" started as a kind of sausage, then developed into anything cooked in a bag (like a sausage casing), then as OED says "its meaning and application are now rather indefinite." OED's earliest quote for sweet pudding (as opposed to meat-based), in 1544, includes eggs (though it also includes breadcrumbs etc.). Not clear when you get puddings which are custards (i.e. liquids thickened only with egg, and no flour, breadcrumbs, etc.). What was the question? --Macrakis 15:45, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, all very interesting. That confirms what I know about the original use of the term and confirms that it is used in a modern sense to describe a substance like Bird's, however, it doesn't really answer my question, maybe I wasn't that clear. the OED states: "Preparations of batter, milk and eggs, rice, sago, tapioca, and other farinaceous substances, suitably seasoned, and cooked by baking, are now also called puddings." - what I'm curious about is how they came to be called puddings, how the (typically Northern) British usage to mean "dessert" in general came about (and is it responsible for the wider - yet still distinct - definition of pudding), and whether custard is known in many countries as "pudding" because of either of those factors. OED does confirm that rice pudding, chocolate pudding, tapioca pudding, sticky toffee pudding ect. ect. haven't always been called puddings. "pudding" is present in many foreign languages as a loan word from English, with the specific meaning of "custard" and I'm curious about how, and when, it got there. I'm fascinated by pudding because it's such a difficult word to explain to foreign speakers who know it only as custard. Perhaps I should copy this on the pudding talk page. --JamesTheNumberless 09:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Please recall that Talk pages are not for general discussion about the topic, but about improving the article. If you find WP:Reliable sources on these topics, please add what you learn to the relevant articles. --Macrakis 17:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Savory Sauces

Proper preparation of Hollandaise and Bearnaise sauces rely on cooking egg-yolks properly, such that the sauce emulsifies, much like a custard. It seems the primary difference is that these sauces do not employ any milk or dairy products. However, Allemande sauces (closely related to Hollandaise and Bearnaise,) usually do contain cream as an ingredient. Would these sauces somehow qualify as custards? Caen 00:55, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, they are using eggs as emulsifiers of water/fat mixtures, so there may be some physico-chemical similarity. But as far as culinary terminology goes, I don't think anyone would call mayonnaise (uncooked) or Hollandaise (cooked) sauce a kind of custard. --Macrakis 01:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

walking on custard

why is the term "Walking on Custard" misleading? Hypnoticmonkey 23:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

As the article says, what is actually being walked on is "A suspension of uncooked imitation custard powder", so it is (a) not custard because it is not cooked (and therefore doesn't have the texture of custard), (b) made of imitation custard powder, which isn't really custard (no eggs), and (less relevantly, I suppose) (c) not especially true of custard, but of other starch suspensions as well. --Macrakis 14:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

In some countries, the "imitation" custard made from powder *is* what is generally considered to be "custard".

That having been said, it's somewhat academic- I agree that the *uncooked* powder/milk/whatever mixture couldn't actually be considered "custard" by *any* reasonable definition. Fourohfour 19:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

"Custard" is not "crème anglaise" in french

Sorry, but I'm French and custard doesn't mean "crème anglaise". In french "custard" is translated as "crème patissière". And plus "crème anglaise" ("English cream") doens't come from England but deffinitily from France. We the French call this liquid cream "crème anglaise" because of the main dessert in which we use it : "îles flottantes" (floating islands). The Islands are the white of the egg mixed with sugar and forming a floating sweet mass in the middle of a cup full of "crème anglaise". So why the cream should be called "english" ? because of the floating white mass, which represent the british islands in the middle of a sea... of cream (lol). That's the real reason, "crème anglaise" is only english on its name and no on its origin, thanks for reading. 343KKT Kintaro (talk) 15:58, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Crème patissière is one particular kind of custard, the kind that is used for filling patisseries. The kind you eat by itself is, if I'm not mistaken, simply called crème, which is of course very ambiguous if it's not qualified. See the French wikipedia page fr:Crèmes pour pâtisserie. As for the story about crème anglaise and îles flottantes is charming, but doesn't seem likely. Do you have a WP:Reliable source for it? --macrakis (talk) 22:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

As Crème pâtissière explains, it contains flour, and is therefore not a true custard. On the other hand Creme_anglaise explains that it is made with milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla. That is a custard. Globbet (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Setting temperature not given

I came here to find the setting temperature for custard. The article says there's a 3-5º range between setting and curdling but the actual temps on either side aren't given, if someone knows what they are it should go in the article. Thanks. Meltyman (talk) 14:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)