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Lemon Cheesecakes
Rub the peel off two large lemons with half a pound of loaf sugar. Crush the sugar to powder, and mix it with half a pound of clarified butter, add six well-beaten eggs, five table-spoonfuls of cream, and the strained juice of one of the lemons. Stir all together over a slow fire until the mixture begins to thicken. Let it get cold. Line patty-pans with good puff paste--rather more than fill them--and bake in a quick oven. Time to bake, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for three dozen cheesecakes.
This is a lemon curd baked in puff pastry tartlet shells, despite the name. The filling is made and cooled first, so it can be done a day ahead.
- The hinge: gentle heat"A slow fire" means low heat with constant stirring, ideally in a bowl over simmering water. Six eggs with only five spoonfuls of cream will scramble the moment the mixture nears a boil; take it off as soon as it coats the spoon.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone, and the standard refined sugar of the period; its hard surfaces happen to work well for stripping the oils from the zest. Granulated sugar does the same job; rub it against the whole lemons, or grate the zest and work it into the sugar with your fingers until damp and fragrant.
- Clarified butterHalf a pound is 8 oz, or two American sticks. Clarifying removes water and milk solids, which keeps the finished curd firmer; ordinary unsalted butter works but gives a slightly softer set.
- CreamFive tablespoonfuls is roughly 75 ml. The fat content of Victorian cream varied; single or whipping cream is probably closer to it than double.
- Patty-pansSmall shallow tartlet tins. A 12-hole shallow bun tin is the nearest modern equivalent; a standard deep muffin tin gives fewer, thicker cheesecakes and needs longer baking.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-450F (200-230C), the sort of heat puff paste needs to rise. Fifteen minutes is right for shallow tins; check that the pastry base is cooked through before the filling colours too far.
- "Rather more than fill them"The phrase sits next to the pastry-lining instruction and reads awkwardly, but is most easily taken as filling the cases generously: the mixture is already thickened and sets rather than rises, so it can be heaped slightly proud of the pastry.
- YieldThree dozen small cheesecakes from this quantity, which assumes very shallow tins. Expect closer to eighteen to twenty-four from a modern bun tin.
- The price1s 8d is twenty pence in pre-decimal money, quoted as the total cost of the batch rather than any modern figure.
English "cheesecakes" of this kind contain no cheese at all, and the name is a survival: the original was a tart filled with fresh curd, and the word stayed attached to the small pastry case long after cooks began filling it with lemon curd, almond mixtures or jam. Recipes for lemon cheesecakes appear in English household books from the eighteenth century onward, and the technique here "- rubbing the sugar against the lemon peel to draw out its oil "- is the same one that gives punch and shrub their perfume; it extracts far more aroma than juice alone. Cassell's, compiled for middle-class households in the later nineteenth century, prices its recipes by the batch and seems to assume a cook who keeps puff paste on hand, which may be why the pastry gets a single clause and the filling gets the whole method.