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Jelly for the Cake
Take one coffee cupful of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of butter, two eggs, and the juice of two lemons; beat all together and boil in a farina kettle until of the consistency of jelly.
This is lemon curd under an older name, written for a cook who already knew what a farina kettle was. The whole recipe hinges on gentle, indirect heat.
- Farina kettle means double boilerA farina kettle was a two-part pan for cooking cereal over water. Use a heatproof bowl or the top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, with the base not touching the water. Direct heat will scramble the eggs before the mixture thickens.
- "Boil" does not mean boilCurd sets at about 170-175F, well below boiling. Stir constantly and pull it off when it coats the back of a spoon and holds a line drawn through it. It thickens further as it cools, so stopping slightly early is the safer error.
- A coffee cupfulTake it as roughly one standard cup, about 200 g of granulated sugar. Period equivalences for a coffee cup vary and some run smaller than a modern 8 oz cup, so if the result tastes over-sweet against your lemons, scale back next time.
- Two lemonsModern supermarket lemons give roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice each, so expect something between 1/3 and 1/2 cup total. Zest the lemons before juicing and add the zest with the other ingredients for a stronger flavour than juice alone gives; strain it out at the end if you want a smooth curd.
- ButterTwo tablespoons is a lean curd by modern standards, which lean on four to six. Use unsalted, and cut it in small so it melts evenly into the eggs.
- Strain and coolPass the finished curd through a fine sieve to catch any set bits of white, then press plastic film onto the surface so it does not skin.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough to fill one two-layer cake or a dozen small tarts. Refrigerate and use within a week; it does not keep at room temperature.
Lemon curd appears in English cookery writing through the nineteenth century, often under the names lemon cheese or lemon butter. It filled tarts and cakes and was spread on bread at tea, and it travelled into American household books as a cheap, quick alternative to a cooked flour filling: no milk to sour, no starch to taste raw, and lemons keeping well enough to be a reliable winter flavouring. Farina kettles were sold for cooking breakfast cereals and could serve as a household double boiler for custards and sauces.