Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

cannot procure peach leaves, substitute a handful of peach-kernels or bitter almonds, or a vanilla bean split in pieces. When it has boiled hard, strain the milk and set it away to cool. Beat very light eight eggs, and stir them by degrees into the milk when it is quite cold, (if warm, the eggs will curdle it, and cause whey at the bottom,) and add gradually a quarter of a pound of sugar. Fill your cups with it; set them in a Dutch-oven, and pour round them boiling water sufficient to reach nearly to the tops of the cups. Put hot coals under the oven and on the lid, (which must be previously heated by standing it up before a hot fire,) and bake the custards about twenty minutes. Send them to table cold, with nutmeg grated over each. Or you may bake the whole in one large dish. SOFT CUSTARDS. Are made in the above manner, except that to a quart of milk you must have twelve yolks of eggs, and no whites. You may devote to this purpose the yolks that are left when you have used the whites for cocoa-nut or almond puddings, or for lady cake or maccaroons. BOILED CUSTARDS. Beat eight eggs very light, omitting the whites of four. Mix them gradually with a quart of cold milk and a quarter of a pound of sugar. Put the mixture into a sauce-pan with a bunch of peach leaves, or a handful of broken up peach-kernels or bitter almonds; the yellow peel of a. lemon, and a handful of broken cinnamon; or you may boil in it a vanilla bean. Set it on hot coals, and simmer it slowly, stirring it all the time. As soon as it comes to a boil, take it immediately off the fire, or it will curdle and be lumpy. Then strain it; add eight or ten drops of oil of lemon, and put it into glass cups. You may lay in the bottom of each cup a maccaroon soaked in wine. Grate nutmeg over the top, and send it