Ingredients for 4 servings

half a litre of fresh whole milk

4 egg yolks

2 spoonful of 00 flour

4 spoonful of sugar

a 10 cm long and 2 cm wide slice of lemon peel (just the yellow part)

Preparation

Put the egg yolks, sugar and flour in a steel pot with a thick bottom. Mix the ingredients with a spoon and beat until the mixture is creamy. Add two spoonful of milk and mix energetically and thoroughly. Keep on adding little milk at a time while stirring. Add the lemon peel and put the mixture over medium heat while mixing and cook until the custard starts to boil, making sure that the custard doesn’t stick to the pot. Remove from heat and stir again. Cover the pot and let the custard cool down, mixing from time to time. Then remove the peel and serve with dry cookies.

Variants

You can replace lemon peel with orange or tangerine peel and add a pinch of vanilla.

News and tips

Custard is a traditional recipe and many people consider it one of the best sweets ever invented. It can also be used as a remedy against the bad mood; a cup of custard with two or three biscuits will reduce anxiety, stress and the tendency to cry. This because sugars boost the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps reduce anxiety. Dr. Judith Wurtman, researcher at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, demonstrates that 30-40 g of sugars, the equivalent of two spoonful of sugar or honey, can improve your mood in about twenty minutes, with a similar effect to that of medicines.