[Sca-cooks] OT--What is the yellow filling in the sweet dim sum buns?

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Judith Kingsbury:
>Greetings,
>I am helping a group of friends, ok, pirates, do a banquet of finger
>foods for our Baronial Yule.  The area I was asked to do is Asia, so
>naturally I thought of dim sum, because those pirates just don't
>like plates or utensils probably because they can be used for
>killing the chefs.  On Thanksgiving my husband and I celebrated by
>going out for our annual dim sum brunch.  At the restaurant we came
>upon one of our favorite dim sums, but have been unable to determine
>its filling.  It's a sweet bun with a bright yellow filling, which
>almost looks like the color of egg's yolk.  Sometimes it is steamed
>and sometimes they bake it with a cookie-like topping upon it.  Both
>variations are yummy.  If any of you know what that filling is,
>please email me off-list with the information?
>Humbly Lurking,
>Miriam bas Levi

Just in case anybody else cares to hear about this, I'll use the bandwidth.

One possibility is yellow bean paste (which is really more brown than
yellow). Another, and more likely possibility, since you describe it
in some detail, is custard. From what I've seen, this is a variant on
creme patissiere, a stirred custard stabilized with a starch of some
kind, such as you might find in eclairs, napoleons, or cream puffs.
The stuff in the sweet custard buns is a little heavier than the kind
you'd normally find in French pastries, though. I think the idea is
that when the filling is hot (as steamed bun fillings are wont to be)
you don't want them squirting on your chest.

Let me rummage in my freezer for a second; I'm pretty sure I have
some frozen ones from the May May Bakery of Pell Street, off Mott, in
New York's Chinatown (the One True commercial source for such things
if you're neither at a restaurant nor making them yourself) and see
what the label says...

... "Filling Ingredients:

Water, Sugar, Egg Yolk, Non-fat Dry Milk, Patent Flour, Butter,
Condensed Milk, Evaporated Milk, Corn Starch, Certified Food Color
(FD&C Yellow #5, Red #40), 1/10 of 1% Sodium Benzoate"

I'd suggest, if you wanted to make these, using a good pastry cream
recipe, and use a little extra starch compared to what the recipe
would normally call for. Actually, the Patent Flour would probably
mean something like Wondra, which you could actually add to the cream
goo more or less to taste as it cooks/cools, in order to get the
right consistence without having to use any more than is absolutely
necessary.

I'm assuming periodicity is not really an issue? I mean, this dish is
almost certainly a 19th-or-20th-century adaptation of a Western dish
for which there appears not to be a lot of evidence to support the
idea of its existence in period. But then, dim sum as we know it is
probably not period, either (although some of the dishes
traditionally served may be).

And besides, it's only the Toysanese, my lady wife's ancestors, who
were pirates... ;-)

Adamantius