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Cheesecakes
Beat the yolks of four and the whites of two eggs separately; the whites must be beaten to a solid froth. Rub the rind of a lemon upon a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar; then pound it, and mix it with the eggs. Add a quarter of a pound of fresh butter melted, and the juice of two lemons. When these are well beaten together, put the mixture into a large jar, which should be placed in a pan of boiling water on the fire. Stir it constantly until it thickens. Line some tartlet-tins with a good light crust, and three-parts fill them with the mixture. When nearly baked, take them out of the oven for a minute, brush them over with white of egg, and sift a little pounded sugar over them, and put them back into the oven to brown. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1 1/2d. each. Sufficient for two dozen cheesecakes.
This is lemon curd baked in pastry cases — what Victorian cooks called "lemon cheese" — and the whole recipe hinges on the temperature of the water bath.
- The hinge: never let the curd boilThe jar sits in boiling water, but the mixture itself must not exceed about 170-175F or the eggs curdle and the curd turns grainy. Keep the water at a bare simmer, stir constantly, and pull it off the heat as soon as it coats the spoon.
- Rubbing the sugar on the lemonRubbing loaf sugar over the rind strips the zest oils into the sugar, which is where nearly all the lemon aroma lives. Grated zest, or zest pulsed with the sugar, does the same job; loaf sugar was a hard cone that had to be pounded, so ordinary granulated is the equivalent.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of sugar is 4 oz / 115 g (about 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon); a quarter pound of butter is also 4 oz / 115 g (one US stick). Four yolks and two whites for that much butter and sugar gives a soft curd.
- "A good light crust"The book does not specify which paste; a short, rich crust is the usual reading, though "light" could equally suggest a flaky or puff paste. Line the tins, chill them, and blind-bake the shells before filling if you want crisp bases — the curd is already cooked, so the bake is only setting the pastry and browning the top.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given because domestic ranges of the period carried no temperature setting and oven thermometers were not in general household use. For tartlets of this size, around 375F is a reasonable modern equivalent; twenty minutes at that heat suits pastry that has not been pre-baked.
- The egg-white glazeBrushing with white of egg and dusting with sugar near the end gives a thin meringue-like crust that browns quickly. Watch it — two or three minutes back in the oven is usually enough, and the sugar will scorch if you forget it.
- Yield and keepingTwo dozen small tartlets, which suits shallow tins of about 2 inches. Filled, they are best eaten the day they are made; the curd itself keeps a week refrigerated in a covered jar.
- The cost note"1 1/2d. each" is pre-decimal British currency, about a penny and a half. It is a period price index, not a figure that converts usefully.
For most of English culinary history a "cheesecake" was a small tart, not a large one, and it did not always contain cheese: the word had loosened to mean any rich curd filling baked in pastry, whether the curd was milk-based or, as here, egg-and-butter. This lemon version is the mixture also sold as "lemon cheese" or "lemon curd," and the name is a survival of that older sense. Cassell's, generally dated to the 1870s and reissued for decades afterwards, filed such recipes among the small pastries a middle-class household would turn out by the two dozen for tea, which is why the entry ends with a per-item cost amenable to a housekeeper's accounts. The double-boiler method it specifies, using a large jar set in a pan of water, was a common domestic workaround for a coal range with no low setting.