This Spanish Custard Family Recipe Dates Back Five Generations

By: Jennifer Justus

Copy to clipboard

A Tampa matriarch shares a family recipe that’s traveled continents and generations.

Sitting across from the Tampa restaurant that’s been in her family for 120 years, Andrea Gonzmart Williams smooth her hand over a page from a yellow legal pad. It’s where her grandmother’s hand also moved across the paper decades ago as she wrote out the family recipe for Spanish custard.

“This is the flan,” says Williams, the fifth generation in her family to steward the Columbia Restaurant. “It was kind of my ice cream growing up. For my child, it was probably one of the first desserts she ever tried.”

The hands that wrote the cursive script also trained as a classical pianist at Juilliard. Adela Hernandez Gonzmart was one of the first women to graduate from the prestigious school. Williams grew up hearing her grandmother play the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona and followed her rhythm in both music and food.

Williams began working at the restaurant, filing papers, at age 10. She was hostessing by the following year and has since worked every station. After college, she became the first woman to cook in the Columbia kitchen. While she’s on the business side of the operation today, she still cooks often at home from The Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook, which began from her grandmother’s written pages on a legal pad. Williams discovered the pages recently in her grandmother’s burgundy briefcase.

“This is like having a little piece of her,” she says. “It makes me so sentimental.” Flan has a long history, first recorded in savory variations in ancient Rome. The Spanish made it sweet, and carried it with them across continents. Now at the Columbia, it’s like an offering. “This is our signature,” Williams says, “that we are proud to say, ‘You are celebrating some- thing special? This is compliments of us.’”

In her home copy of the cookbook, she’s marked up other favorites like stuffed artichokes and arroz con pollo. “There’s a green bean salad I cook all the time. When my dad eats it, you can see in his eyes that it takes him back to his mother’s kitchen.”

She wonders if her daughter will someday copy the recipes as she has. “I know my grandmother got recipes from her mother, Carmen,” she says. “And to think that these recipes could very well be Carmen’s, my great-grandmother’s, I can only hope that these recipes continue to be passed down.”

Get the Recipe

Image courtesy of Chip Weiner

Flan

yields

Serves 6

ingredients

1 1⁄4 cups whole milk
1 (8-ounce) can sweetened
condensed milk
1 strip lemon peel, 1⁄4-inch wide
1 whole cinnamon stick
5 eggs
1⁄4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Special equipment:

6 (4-ounce) ovenproof custard cups

steps

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine whole milk and condensed milk with lemon peel and cinnamon stick; scald, stirring frequently to prevent filming, until bubbles form around the edge of the pan and milk begins to steam.
Remove pan from heat and allow milk to cool slightly. (Pro tip: Scalding involves heating milk to 180 degrees, then cooling to around 110 degrees. It brings out flavor and creates texture uniformity.)
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
In bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, or by hand, beat eggs and add 2 tablespoons of sugar, vanilla extract, and salt until well blended.
Remove lemon peel and cinnamon stick from cooled milk mixture and discard, then gradually stir milk mixture into eggs.
In an electric kettle or a pot on the stove, heat about 1 quart of water without bringing to a boil.
In a small skillet, combine 1⁄4 cup sugar with 1 tablespoon of water and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until sugar is golden brown. Pour immediately into six 4-ounce custard cups, approximately 1 teaspoon in each.
Pour milk and egg mixture into cups over caramelized sugar, dividing evenly. Place an ovenproof casserole or other high-sided dish directly on oven rack and place cups in it; carefully pour in hot (but not boiling) water to a depth of 2 inches around cups. Bake for 40 minutes. (Pro tip: Water should not boil or custard will be filled with holes.)
Carefully remove custard cups from pan and cool in the refrigerator.
To serve, unmold by pressing edges of custard with a spoon to break away from each cup, then turn upside down onto dessert plates. Spoon caramelized sugar from bottom of cup over top of each custard.