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CREAM, LEMON (another way) (Put one pint of cream into)
Put one pint of cream into a scrupulously clean saucepan, with four table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar, and the thin rind of a lemon, and simmer till pleasantly flavoured. Dissolve an ounce of isinglass, and add this to the cream when cool, together with the yolks of two eggs well beaten. Strain the liquid into a jug; put the jug into a saucepan of cold water, place this over a slow fire, and stir the liquid constantly until it thickens; it must not boil. When nearly cold, add the juice of the lemon. Pour the cream backwards and forwards for a few minutes until the juice is well mixed. Put it into a well-oiled mould, and keep in a cool place until set. Turn it out before serving. Good cream may be made of Swiss milk; if this is used, the sugar must be omitted. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 10d. with cream, 1s. 8d. with Swiss milk. Sufficient for one pint and a half mould.
A cooked custard set with isinglass and moulded — closer to a modern panna cotta than to a pouring cream. Two things decide whether it works: the custard must never boil, and the lemon juice must go in cold.
- The hinge: no boiling, everThe jug-in-water arrangement is a bain-marie. Hold the water hot but below a simmer and stir until the custard coats a spoon, around 175-180F; above that the two yolks scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, sold in shreds and dissolved in a little warm water. Powdered gelatine sets more firmly per ounce, so a full ounce would give a rubbery mould; about 1/4 oz (7 g, roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons) or three leaves per imperial pint gives a spoonable set.
- A pint means 20 fl ozCassell's is British, so the pint is 570 ml, not 475. The mould is a pint and a half, about 850 ml; the recipe gives its yield only as the size of the mould, not a number of servings.
- Sifted sugarFine white sugar passed through a sieve to remove lumps — caster sugar is the direct equivalent. Four tablespoons is about 2 oz, which is restrained by modern dessert standards.
- Swiss milkThe Victorian trade name for sweetened condensed milk, generally traced to the Anglo-Swiss company at Cham. That is why the sugar is dropped when it is used; unsweetened evaporated milk is not a substitute without putting the sugar back.
- Lemon rind and juicePare the rind thinly with no white pith, which turns bitter in hot cream. The juice goes in only when the mixture is nearly cold, or the acid will curdle it; the recipe's pouring backwards and forwards is simply to mix the juice through evenly.
- Oiling and turning outUse a neutral oil brushed thinly; the recipe says only 'well-oiled'. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate to release.
- Real timingThe stated half hour is active work only. Allow four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, before unmoulding.
English cookery books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are full of "creams" — lemon, orange, ratafia, chocolate — flavoured dairy mixtures either served soft in glasses or stiffened enough to turn out of a mould, and this entry is one of a long run of variants in Cassell's. The setting agent tells you the date: isinglass, imported from Russian sturgeon fisheries and sold by the ounce to confectioners and brewers alike, dominated until cheap refined leaf and powdered gelatine displaced it late in the century. The alternative version made with "Swiss milk" is the more revealing detail, since sweetened condensed milk was then a novel industrial product and its appearance here, at well under two-thirds the cost noted for fresh cream (1s. 8d. against 2s. 10d.), shows a household manual quietly offering a cheaper route to the same dish.