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Honeycomb Cream
Strain and sweeten liberally the juice of two large lemons and a Seville orange. Put it into a glass dish. Boil a pint and a half of thick cream. Pour it into a heated teapot. Put the glass dish containing the juice on the ground, and pour the cream on it very slowly, and from a good height, so as to froth it well. Let it stand until cold. It should be well stirred at table before serving. This is the old-fashioned way of preparing honeycomb cream, but a better plan is to whisk the white of an egg and a little sugar with the cream, then, as the froth rises, to take it off and lay it upon the lemon-juice until all the cream is used. Honeycomb cream should be made the day before it is wanted, and put at once into the dish in which it is to remain. Time, an hour or more to prepare. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A Victorian cold cream dessert that works by acid and aeration rather than gelatine. Two methods are given; the second is the more reliable.
- The hingeThe froth is created by pouring hot cream from a height onto cold citrus juice, so the fat is aerated on the way down and lightly curdled on landing. Pour in a thin steady stream from as high as you can manage without splashing; the teapot spout gives a controlled stream, and the dish is set on the ground presumably to increase the drop.
- Thick creamThis means English double cream, around 48 per cent butterfat. US heavy cream at 36 per cent will froth but sets softer and can separate into a watery layer; if you can find manufacturing or 40 per cent-plus cream, use it.
- A pint and a halfAn imperial pint and a half is 30 imperial fluid ounces, roughly 3 1/2 US cups (about 850 ml). Note that an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, not the 16 of a US pint.
- Seville orangeA bitter marmalade orange, in season roughly January to February. Out of season, use the juice of half a regular orange plus an extra tablespoon of lemon juice and a little grated orange zest to approximate the sharpness.
- Sweeten liberallyNo quantity is given. For this volume of juice, 4 to 6 tablespoons of caster sugar dissolved fully in the cold juice is a sensible starting point; taste before the cream goes in, because you cannot correct it afterwards without knocking down the froth.
- The raw egg whiteThe improved method whisks an uncooked white into the cream and the dish is never heated afterwards. Use pasteurised egg white, and skip the variant entirely if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised. The first method needs no egg at all.
- Boiling the creamBring it just to the boil and no further, stirring, then pour at once. Cream held at a rolling boil catches on the pan base and gives the finished dish a cooked, scalded flavour.
- Standing timeMake it a full day ahead and refrigerate in its serving dish, undisturbed. The stirring at table is deliberate: the froth sits above a sharp syrup and the two are meant to be combined in the glass at the last moment.
- YieldSix to seven persons, as the original states. The "probable cost, 3s" is a period price note, not an instruction.
Honeycomb cream belongs to a family of English creams and syllabubs, documented from the sixteenth century onward, that set or froth by the action of citrus juice or wine on cream rather than by any setting agent. Its nearest relative is the whipped syllabub, and both are often connected with the older conceit of "milk from the cow," in which milk was squirted directly into a bowl of cider or wine to raise a foam — the same trick of falling liquid and acid that this recipe is said to reproduce with a heated teapot held high. The name is traditionally explained by the appearance: a coarse, cellular froth sitting over clear syrup. The source book characteristically records the "old-fashioned way" alongside a revised method. The Seville orange in the list is a seasonal detail: bitter oranges arrived in Britain in a short midwinter glut and were used well beyond marmalade while they lasted.