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LEMON BRANDY (for flavouring Custards and sweet dishes)
Take the thin rind of half a dozen fresh lemons, and put it in a bottle with a pint of brandy. Let it infuse for six weeks, then strain the liquid, and put it in small bottles, cork and seal securely, and put aside for use. Probable cost, lemons, 1d. each. Sufficient for a pint of lemon brandy. LEMON BRANDY (another way). (See BRANDY, LEMON.)
A simple citrus infusion that keeps for years and stands in for lemon extract in custards, cakes and creams. Almost everything depends on how you pare the lemons.
- Take only the coloured zest"Thin rind" means the oil-bearing outer layer alone, removed with a swivel peeler or zester. Any white pith carried over turns the brandy bitter over six weeks, and no amount of straining will pull that back.
- Unwaxed fruitSupermarket lemons are usually coated in food-grade wax and may be treated with fungicide. Scrub them in warm water first, or buy unwaxed, since the peel is the entire recipe.
- A pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml, rather than the 16 fl oz US pint. Six lemons' worth of zest to 570 ml of spirit is a strong infusion; four is plenty if your lemons are large.
- Which brandyAny 40% ABV grape brandy works, and the alcohol strength is what makes the extraction and the keeping possible. Do not substitute a low-proof fruit liqueur or brandy-flavoured spirit, which lacks the strength to draw the oils and to preserve the result.
- Six weeks is generousZest gives up its oil quickly, and the liquid will already be strongly perfumed well before the six weeks are up. If you prefer a lighter result, taste as it goes and strain when it pleases you rather than waiting out the full term.
- StrainingStrain through a fine sieve, then again through a coffee filter or damp muslin to catch the fine sediment that would otherwise settle in the small bottles.
- Bottling and keepingThe recipe's "cork and seal securely" suits a spirit that will sit for months, and a tight closure guards against evaporation of the alcohol. Small bottles with tight caps, kept dark, should hold the flavour for a long while; the aroma is what fades first in a part-used bottle.
- How much to useIt is much weaker than a commercial lemon extract, so use it more freely and add to taste. In uncooked creams and ices the alcohol stays present, so add it at the end and taste as you go.
- On the price"1d. each" is one old penny per lemon, priced by the fruit rather than by weight, as imported citrus generally was.
Flavouring brandies were the Victorian kitchen's answer to a problem now solved by a shelf of small brown bottles: how to have the taste of lemon, bitter almond, orange or vanilla in January, and in a form that would not spoil. Alcohol dissolves the aromatic oils in citrus peel far better than water does, so a cook who bought lemons for their juice could put the pared rind straight into spirit and bank the flavour indefinitely. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, treats it as a piece of standing kitchen equipment, made once and drawn on all year. The cross-reference to BRANDY, LEMON is simply the dictionary's alphabetical inversion of the name, so that a cook hunting under either word would find it. The same method, minus the household economy, survives commercially in limoncello and in the citrus extracts sold today.