Burnt honey custard, comb
Three ingredients and one decision: how far to take the honey before it stops being sweet.
Honey caramelises differently from sugar. It goes from golden to acrid in about forty seconds, and the whole dish lives in the ten seconds before that. Taken far enough, the sweetness recedes and what is left is something closer to malt and burnt orange, with a genuine bitterness at the back.
That honey is whisked into cream and yolks and baked slowly in a low oven until it is just barely set — loose enough that the spoon leaves a hollow that fills back in. Any firmer and it becomes a crème caramel, which is a fine dessert and not this one.
A piece of the comb goes on top, unheated. It is chewy and waxy and slightly confronting if you have not eaten comb before, and it makes the point that this came out of a hive rather than a jar.
On the plate
- Burnt honey
- Taken to 178°C, stopped with cream, cooled and folded through the base.
- Custard
- Yolks, cream, burnt honey. Baked at 95°C until barely set.
- Comb
- A square of raw comb from the hives on the sea wall, served cold.
- Finish
- Bee pollen and a pinch of salt, which is the only seasoning it gets.
To drink
Casa Olmeda Pedro Ximénez — poured short, because the custard is already doing most of the work.
The cellar listSea Wall Hives
Half a mile north
Eleven hives set behind the dunes. The honey changes completely between June and September, and so does this dish.
