Lagan nu custard recipe: the Parsi wedding dessert

Lagan nu custard is a dense, cardamom-and-nutmeg-scented baked custard, set in a water bath rather than whisked into a souffle, served at the end of every Parsi wedding feast.

Its name means, simply, "wedding custard". Cyrus Todiwala, the Parsi chef who opened Café Spice Namasté in London in 1995 and spent three decades pushing regional Indian cooking past curry-house cliché, closed the restaurant's Royal Docks site this week, its website calling the pause work "toward our next new venture". The dessert, unlike the restaurant, needs no reinvention; it has barely changed in a century.

Ingredients

Reducing the milk is what gives lagan nu custard its density, without extra eggs or gelatine.

• 1 litre whole milk
• 200ml condensed milk
• 100g caster sugar
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 tsp ground green cardamom
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tbsp rose water
• 2 tbsp chopped pistachios and almonds, for garnish
• Ghee or butter, for greasing

Method

1. Simmer the milk with the sugar over medium heat until it reduces by about a third, stirring now and then. Reducing the milk concentrates its own proteins and sugars, which is what gives lagan nu custard its dense set without extra eggs or gelatine.
2. Stir in the condensed milk, then take the pan off the heat and let it cool until warm, not hot.
3. Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl, then add the warm milk gradually, whisking constantly. Adding it slowly tempers the eggs, raising their temperature gradually so they don't scramble on contact with the hot liquid.
4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a greased baking dish. Straining removes any cooked egg flecks, leaving the custard silky rather than grainy once it sets.
5. Stir in the cardamom, nutmeg and rose water, then place the dish in a larger roasting tin filled with hot water reaching halfway up its sides.
6. Bake at 160°C for 35–40 minutes, until just set with a gentle wobble at the centre. The water bath insulates the custard from the oven's direct heat, so it sets dense and smooth instead of puffing up and curdling like a souffle.
7. Cool to room temperature, scatter with the chopped nuts, and serve just warm or chilled.

Why it isn't a crème caramel

Is lagan nu custard the same thing as crème caramel? No: there's no caramel layer and nothing gets unmoulded. It bakes and is served in the same dish, closer in method to a British queen of puddings than to a French flan. Parsi households each have their own ratio of milk to condensed milk, and no two versions taste quite the same, a lot like Bengal's payesh, India's other great milk-based wedding sweet.