“Bernice liked to bring us custard, which had a thick yellow skin and sat in a copious liquid the consistency of eyewater.”
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
“Pleasant custards sit behind
The white Venetian blind.” Gwendolyn Brooks
The white Venetian blind.” Gwendolyn Brooks
Jellied broth
“I’ve already noticed,” he went on, “how disgraceful the food is! Haven’t you? … The food was bad. Cooked for false teeth, served without wine, of an almost studied pallor (jellied broth, fish in a bland sauce, boiled potatoes, big yellowish beans), and cooled by its journey up from the kitchen in the basement, their dinner had had a quality of disinvolvement, like dishes served on the stage. An illusion of food. At the end had come a custard, pale, frightened, a virtual Mélisande of a custard, proving to Francis that Mrs. McBride must have planned the meal.
— James Merrill
“Like the flowers on a grave bearing the mother of a sentimental hoodlum, Keith’s bouquet leaned and loitered in its bowl on the round table. Nicola always beheld these flowers with disbelief. The colours spoke to her of custard, of blancmange — a leaden meat tea served on pastel plates, the desiccation of a proletarian wake for some tyrant grandad, or some pub parrot of a granny, mad these thirty years.”
M. Amis, London Fields (elsewhere, Keith smells as if he’d eaten a “mustard-coated camel”)
“The skies remind you of those mounds of custard
Tylman de Gameren so loved to scoff,
With loads of capercaillies, fully busted,
And soft asparaguses to suck off.” James Fenton, “Lollipops of the Pomeranian Baroque” (poem appears in the section of JF’s Selected titled “Empire of the Senseless,” but here is Wikipedia on Gameren) [cf. Updike’s skies]
Tylman de Gameren so loved to scoff,
With loads of capercaillies, fully busted,
And soft asparaguses to suck off.” James Fenton, “Lollipops of the Pomeranian Baroque” (poem appears in the section of JF’s Selected titled “Empire of the Senseless,” but here is Wikipedia on Gameren) [cf. Updike’s skies]
