Take thick creame and boile it with some sugar & a nutmeg sliced when it hath boiled a prettie while, put in the yelks of fower eggs well beaten, & stirre it about, & then take it from the fire, & put in two or three spoonfulls of rose water, then stirre it till it bee almost cold, then have sippets, cut in a dish and wet them through with sack, & then poure the creame to them, and when it is cold put some sugar & nutmeg smalle sliced upon it, and so serve it.
--Lady Elinor Fettiplace, 1604

4 egg yolks, beaten
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
Nutmeg
2 teaspoons rosewater
Sherry

Make biscuit bread. Layer in a pan. Sprinkle with sherry

Combine cream, sugar, and a few gratings of nutmeg in the top of a double boiler. Gently warm the cream, but don’t let it boil. When it is hot, slowly add the egg yolks a little at a time, stirring constantly so they don’t curdle. Cook to 170 degrees or until the custard coats the back of the spoon. Place the custard pan in a bowl of cold water and ice and stir until the custard cools.

Pour the cooled custard over the biscuit bread. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled with sugar and nutmeg sprinkled on top.

Notes:
I would make the most changes to how I prepared this dish. First, I made individual cookies with the biscuit bread. Next time I would bake the stuff in a loaf pan and slice it. There would be more porous surface area available to soak up custard. Secondly, I was concentrating so hard on making sure that the eggs didn’t curdle, that I forgot to separate them. I wonder if the custard would be thicker without the whites. In any case, it tasted very good.

Once again, I left out the rosewater. Add it while the custard is cooling.

I garnished the dish with fresh figs because they were in season.

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Copyright 2003, Abigail Weiner