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Lemon Custard, or Creams Without Eggs
Strain the juice of two lemons upon two ounces of powdered loaf sugar. Soak the thin rinds of the lemons in a pint of cream, and when the flavour is extracted, boil the liquid, let it cool, and pour it very gradually over the juice and sugar. Add half a glass of brandy, and serve either in a dish or in cups. This custard will keep for a day or two if put in a cool place. Time, a few minutes to thicken the custard. Probable cost, 1s. 10d. Sufficient for a pint of custard.
This is a lemon posset in all but name: acid, not egg, does the setting, so the whole thing hangs on how the cream and juice are brought together. Everything else is a matter of restraint.
- The hinge: pour slowly, off the boilLet the boiled cream cool until it is warm rather than hot, then add it to the juice in a thin stream while stirring. Dumping hot cream onto cold acid all at once gives a grainy curd instead of a smooth thickening.
- Cream must be full fatUse heavy or double cream, 36 per cent butterfat or more. Single cream, half-and-half or anything stabilised with gums will either stay liquid or break into flecks when the lemon hits it.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up as needed; "powdered" means crushed fine at home. Caster or superfine sugar is the direct equivalent. Two ounces is a scant third of a cup.
- Half a glass of brandyThe glass meant here is a wine glass of the period, roughly 2 fl oz, so half is about 1 fl oz or 2 tablespoons. The quantity is genuinely approximate; add it at the end and taste, since more alcohol slackens the set.
- The rindsPare the zest thinly with a peeler and leave the white pith behind, or the cream turns bitter. The recipe gives no steeping time, only "when the flavour is extracted," and it has the rinds soaking in the cream before the liquid is boiled; strain the peel out before combining.
- Timing"A few minutes to thicken" means the mixture thickens in the bowl as it stands, not over heat. Do not return it to the pan after the juice goes in.
- Yield and servingA pint of custard fills four small cups or six very small ones. The recipe directs serving once thickened and says nothing about chilling, though time in a cold place will firm it further.
- Keeping"A cool place" meant a larder or cellar. Refrigerate, covered, and eat within two days as the original suggests.
Cassell's calls this a custard, but the setting here does not depend on egg: sweetened cream thickened with citrus juice and a spirit is close to the method of the English posset, a drink of milk curdled with ale or wine that by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also appeared in thicker, spoonable forms; the chilled lemon posset familiar today is a much later shape of the idea. Eggless cream recipes of this kind turn up in Victorian household books, and such a cream needed no careful custard-watching over a coal range, no bain-marie and no risk of scrambling. The costing of 1s 10d is high for a pint of pudding, which may reflect the price of cream and lemons.