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Lemon Pudding (Soak an ounce of gelatine)
Soak an ounce of gelatine and the rinds of two lemons, in a pint of cold water for an hour. Take out the rinds, then set the water and gelatine on the fire, and when the latter is all dissolved add three fourths of a pound of sugar and the juice of three lemons. Let all boil together for five minutes, then pour out the mixture and let it stand until it is cold and beginning to set. Beat the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth, add them to the mixture, and beat the whole for about half an hour until it becomes the consistency of sponge. Pile it lightly in a glass dish, leaving it of a rocky appearance. Put fresh lady fingers around the base, and served with a boiled custard, made of the yolks of the eggs.
This is a lemon sponge — a gelatine jelly whipped with egg white until it doubles and turns opaque. The method has one fatal flaw for a modern table, and it is worth understanding exactly where it sits.
- The egg whites are never cookedThe lemon syrup is boiled, but it is then left to stand "until it is cold and beginning to set" before the raw whites go in. Nothing after that point applies heat, so the whites are eaten raw. A gelatine set is not a kill step, and half an hour of beating in a cool room is closer to an incubation than a treatment.
- Why that mattered less in 1900Why that mattered less then -- The dominant modern egg pathogen, Salmonella Enteritidis, only became a widespread problem in the shell-egg supply in the later twentieth century. The same instruction that was unremarkable when this was written is an avoidable risk now.
- Sugar and acid are not preservatives hereThree quarters of a pound of sugar and the juice of three lemons sound protective, but once they are diluted through a pint of water and aerated into a foam the water activity stays high and the pH is not reliably low enough to control bacteria. Chilling slows growth; it does not undo contamination.
- The accompanying custard is a second exposureThe accompanying custard -- A "boiled custard" made from the two yolks is cooked, though the recipe gives no temperature or timing. That leaves the dish leaning on two separate egg preparations, one of which gets no heat at all. If you want a lemon sponge, use a current recipe built around pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue.
- An ounce of gelatine is not one modern envelopeNote for reading the recipe rather than making it: an ounce is about four of today's quarter-ounce envelopes, and nineteenth-century sheet and shred gelatines were not graded for strength as modern powder is, so weights in older recipes are not directly comparable to current ones.
- Half an hour of beatingThat figure assumes a hand whisk and a strong arm. "The consistency of sponge" describes a mixture that has roughly doubled and holds a rocky peak — the point at which the gelatine has begun to set around the trapped air rather than a fixed time.
Lemon sponge, lemon snow and "snow pudding" are all names for the same family of whipped-jelly desserts that spread through American and British household cookery once commercial gelatine became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before that, cooks made jelly by simmering calves' feet or isinglass for hours; packaged granulated gelatine moved such dishes into the ordinary kitchen with far less labour, and into books like this one, where a dessert needed to be showy, pale and inexpensive. The finishing touches say a good deal about the period's table: the mixture is piled "of a rocky appearance" rather than moulded, ringed with lady fingers, and served with a thin boiled custard — the pouring sauce that did the work whipped cream does now. The frugality is characteristic too, with the yolks left over from the whites turned straight into the sauce so that nothing from the two eggs is wasted.