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Lemon Creams Without Cream
Put the thin rinds of two, and the strained juice of three lemons into a pint of spring water. Let them soak for an hour or two. Add six well-beaten eggs, and four ounces of loaf sugar, set all together over the fire, and stir constantly until the mixture thickens, but do not allow it to boil. Strain it, when cool, into glasses. Time, a few minutes to thicken the cream. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for a pint and a half of cream.
A stirred lemon custard that gets its richness from whole eggs rather than dairy — closer to a pourable lemon curd than to a set cream. Everything depends on keeping it below the boil.
- Do not let it boilWhole eggs in an acidic liquid curdle readily. Cook over a bain-marie or in a heavy pan on low heat, stirring constantly, and pull it off at about 170-175F, when it coats the spoon. If you see the first wisp of steam breaking into bubbles, it has gone too far.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 US cups of water. The stated yield of "a pint and a half" is 30 fl oz imperial, roughly 3 3/4 US cups.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in cones, chipped and pounded before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute: 4 oz is about half a cup.
- Spring waterPeriod recipes routinely call for spring water, probably in preference to hard or tainted household supplies. Filtered or ordinary tap water is fine.
- Thin rindsPare only the coloured zest with a peeler, no white pith, or the finished cream turns bitter. The recipe gives the rinds an hour or two in the water, and that soak is the main infusion of rind flavour alongside the juice.
- Strain twiceStraining -- The recipe calls for a single straining when cool, which takes out the rinds and any thread of set white; a further pass through a fine sieve as you fill the glasses is optional. Small custard glasses or ramekins suit it; expect six to eight servings.
- Texture and chillingWith whole eggs and no starch this sets soft — spoonable when very cold, pourable when merely cool. Chill several hours, covered, and eat within two days.
- Probable cost10d is tenpence in pre-decimal currency, the sort of figure Cassell's gave so a housekeeper could price a dish against its rivals.
Lemon cream was a standard of English dessert cookery from the eighteenth century onward, commonly built on real cream thickened with egg yolks and set in glasses for a supper table. Versions "without cream" recur in Victorian household books; the likely reasons are economic and practical, dairy being costly and quick to spoil in warm weather. Cassell's, published in London in the 1870s as an alphabetical dictionary rather than a narrative cookbook, often printed several variants of the same dish side by side with a probable cost attached to each, which is presumably why an economical substitute like this one earned its own entry. The technique — citrus, sugar and beaten egg stirred over gentle heat until it thickens — is the same one that produces lemon curd, differing mainly in the absence of butter and the large proportion of water.