Custard Power!

A couple years ago, I found myself in a London bar I knew was one of Camden’s primary independent music venues. And without trying to sound pretentious and cool, I had just come off stage after performing. 

Anyway, this isn’t about me. Well, it is, but not like that….

While waiting for my third overpriced margarita, I found myself in conversation with a stranger. I don’t know what got us onto it, but we were talking about imagery from childhood that stays with us. I don’t remember his; it must’ve been boring or unrelatable or, as I suspect, both. But I offered up two examples of my own: medicine and cake. 

The “spoonful of sugar” scene from the original film of Mary Poppins, 1964, is etched on my neural pathways like an engraving on a trophy. It’s the way the medicine looks on the spoon held out by Julie Andrews. The way the light catches its translucent red and reflects it off the silver. To this day, anytime I see a candle through a glass of cabernet or the evening sunshine through a church window, it takes me back to that formative cinematic moment. At some point in time, I drew a parallel between that scene and my other archetypal childhood image: school cake and custard. 

If you’re British, you’ll know — you know?

The custard in question

White sheet cake, sprinkles, hot pink custard. PINK CUSTARD. Custard that was PINK. Custard with the hue of the Pink Panther’s hindquarters. Custard the color of Mr. Potato Head’s ears. This pink custard was served to us by school cooks who looked like the cook from the Banks’s household in the aforementioned film — some time before school dinners were outsourced to a private third-party corporation, like everything else seems to be these days, and before Jamie Oliver intervened to save all of our cardiovascular systems.  

“How do you think they get the pink in this custard?”

“Dunno, red sugar? Like Mary Poppins?” 

That was our best guess. We were kids. It didn’t really matter anyway. As our little school ties flapped in the custardy and crumby remnants in the bottom of our bowls, we knew that we were being looked after, and being looked after tasted GOOD!

I wonder if, like many fond memories held in the fallible machine that is the human brain, my mind gives too much rose-tinted credit to those school cooks with their rose-tinted cheeks and their rose-tinted custard. I’ve reason to believe it was made using instant custard powder. And there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when cooking en masse. But, when I feel overwhelmed in adulthood — or indeed by it — be it with the state of the world or just my own being, I take great comfort in making custard from scratch. 

Dare I say it, I’m becoming known for it. 

Returning to the custard at hand

Egg yolks. Sugar. Milk. Cream. Cornflour (Cornstarch). Vanilla. A couple of bowls, a whisk and spoon, a pan, and a flame. 

Which is my favorite part? It might be the way that beating the eggs with the sugar serves as a stress reliever for the modern man. It might be the test of patience as I await the milk and cream to warm one another in their enveloping embrace or the virtuous passivity in allowing it to happen, intervening only to prevent the full boiling point. Or the concentration of the pour — the hot liquid over the whisked yolks, gently enough not to scramble, confident enough not to spill. Or the absolute trust that tipping the whole affair back into the pan won’t scorch it to hell. Or the way the wooden spoon’s charted course through the steam is met with increasing resistance as the waves of mixture gradually thicken and settle to a horizon with every soothing figure-eight stir. 

In the pink

I don’t put the PINK in. As I say, I don’t know how. Some mysteries are best left unsolved. Just like a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, a spoonful of custard is a meditation as powerful as any experience I had in India. Time seems to stop, and I can’t help but be present. As I turn off the heat and transfer my newfound treasure to a jug, I feel like a prospector who’s struck gold, again.

Just not pink gold. Not this time.