This piece was inspired by a visit to the supermarket, during which I passed by the chilled section, where the ready-made custard was stored.
I have had problems before when trying to locate custard in the supermarket, as the indexing (or categorisation) system sometimes seems to me to be illogical. On one occasion, I was told that custard was placed with cheesecake (just wondering which universe they inhabit!).
For my own part, custard is not a particular favourite of mine, but the men in my life (cliché alert), which these days mostly means my brother and my husband, do enjoy eating it. Thus, on special occasions, it does sometimes feature in my menu planning.
When I was a child, the word custard was synonymous with a commercial powdered product, made up with hot milk, and consumed with the puddings of the day. These included not only the traditional standards, such as plum pie or apple crumble, but also the time-saving options, such as jam tarts (possibly heated up in the oven beforehand). As I recall, the tarts used to come in packs with a mixture of red, yellow and green jams, making them resemble traffic lights. My mother (doubtless in common with many others) also deployed other cakes in her dessert arsenal: Swiss roll and gingerbread also featured on the menu.
My father really enjoyed eating custard as well (is this a ‘man thing’?) and liked it even better cold than hot. He relished the skin that formed on the top (something that I found quite off-putting), as he also did on rice pudding (I had the same opinion about that).
An advantage of custard powder is that it has a long shelf life. This was important in the days when fewer households had a fridge (and some may have had the Holy Grail: a pantry – or larder if you prefer).
But I digress. Back to the present day and the original question. Puddings are not such an important feature in many households these days. This is probably a function of time (with many households having two wage earners) and a focus on healthier diets: I can’t really see any nutritional adviser recommending cake and custard, even as part of a balanced regimen.
Puddings are available ready-made, if desired, and can be defrosted (such as the aforementioned cheesecake) or cooked from frozen. Many people also enjoy ice cream as a sweet, and this requires no prior preparation (except maybe to remove the tub from the freezer and allow it to soften). If you don’t have the time (or inclination) to prepare a pudding from scratch, it is unlikely that you would make the effort to do so with the custard.
Those who like to consider themselves proficient in the kitchen arts might make their own custard (there have been many demonstrations on TV food shows and doubtless videos are also available online). The less confident may still resort to custard powder, or try to buy a ready-made product. Given the labour-saving nature of ready-made custard, it is perhaps not so surprising that it has become an important feature of the chiller cabinet (always assuming that you can find it, that is).
(originally written in January 2018)
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