Custard Cups from the
Glass Encyclopedia
English custard
cup from late 19th
century, typical
shape.
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Victorian custard cups
Custard Cups - A short explanation
Basically a custard cup is a small glass bowl usually with a handle and either a short stem or no stem between the foot and the bowl. They were made in clear glass, often lead crystal, in the Victorian era in England. They were used for serving individual portions of custard to guests at the end of a meal. Many of them look like little squat glasses with a very short stem and a handle, in clear glass; but there are examples without the stem and some in coloured glass.
The shape and function of custard glasses derives from earlier glasses which were used for jelly and before that for syllabub. An English tradition of serving a banquet of sweetmeats, fruits, desserts and wines was popular from about 1700. Syllabub was a drink made of frothy whipped fresh cream and spices added to wine or sherry, very popular in England for over a century.
If you would like to know more about custard cups, there are some helpful books you could read.
Click on the title to read more about a book.
- Sweetmeat and Jelly Glasses (1982) by Therle Hughes, (Antique Collectors Pocket Guides).
- Custard Cups (Nov 2000) by Ulla Stafford.
- English Glass for the Collector: 1660-1860 (3rd edition 1969) G. Bernard Hughes.
- Arthur Negus Guide to British Glass (Sept 1981) by John Brooks.
- Glasses for the dessert: Eighteenth-century English jelly and syllabub glasses (1986) by Tim Udall.
- Possets, syllabubs and their vessels (1986) by Helen McKearin.
- The Encyclopedia of Glass.(2001) by Mark Pickvet.
- Millers Glass Fact File A-Z . (2001) by Ivo Haanstra.
