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LEMON CHEESECAKES (another way)
Simmer together over a slow fire a pound of loaf sugar, four ounces of fresh butter, four well-beaten eggs, and the juice and finely-minced rind of two lemons. Stir one way, and when the sugar is dissolved, and the mixture is smooth and of the consistency of honey, pour it into a bowl. When cool, it is ready to put into the patty-pans. Time to bake, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for two dozen cheesecakes.
This is lemon curd under another name, cooled and spooned into pastry cases. The original assumes you know that the patty-pans are already lined with shortcrust, since Cassell's gives pastry separately.
- The hinge: do not let it boilFour eggs in a pound of sugar will scramble if the pan gets much above 170F. Keep it over the lowest heat, or use a bowl over simmering water, and pull it off as soon as it coats the spoon like honey.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated is the direct equivalent. A pound is about 2 1/4 cups, which makes a very sweet curd by modern taste.
- "Stir one way"A period habit, believed to keep mixtures from separating. It does no harm, but what actually matters is constant gentle stirring that reaches the whole base of the pan.
- Patty-pansSmall tartlet tins, roughly the size of a modern 12-hole bun tray. Line them with shortcrust and expect two dozen from this quantity of filling.
- Baking temperatureThe book gives only a quarter of an hour and no oven temperature. For pastry cases with an already-cooked filling, a moderately hot oven of roughly 375-400F is the usual modern equivalent; bake until the crust is coloured and the curd just barely trembles.
- Rind"Finely-minced rind" means zest only — take it off with a fine grater or zester and leave the white pith, which is bitter and will not soften in the syrup.
- KeepingAny curd left over keeps a week or so covered in the refrigerator. It is not a preserve, despite the sugar, because of the egg and butter.
- The cost line1s. 3d. is fifteen old pence for two dozen — a note for the household accounts, of no use now.
A "cheesecake" in English cookery long predates the cheese-free version here: the original was a tart of pressed curds, sugar and spice, of the kind still made in Yorkshire as curd tart. By the eighteenth century the name had loosened to cover almost any small rich tart with a soft, custard-like filling, and lemon cheesecakes — essentially lemon curd in pastry — appear in Hannah Glasse and in a number of nineteenth-century household books. Cassell's, published in parts from the mid-1870s and reissued for decades, offers several versions side by side; this one needs no curds and no cream, only eggs, butter, sugar and two lemons. The mixture is what would now simply be bottled and sold as lemon curd.