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Lemon Drops
Strain the juice of three or four large lemons into a bowl, then mix powdered loaf sugar with it until it is quite thick. Put it into a pan, and let it boil for five minutes, stirring it constantly. Drop it from the end of a spoon upon writing-paper, and when cold, keep the drops in tin canisters until wanted for use. Or, take two ounces of powdered loaf sugar, mix with them the grated rind of three large lemons, and half a tea-spoonful of fine flour. Whisk the white of an egg thoroughly. Work it up with the other ingredients to a light paste, then place it in drops upon a sheet of writing-paper, and dry before the fire until the drops are quite hard. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 1d. per ounce.
Two quite different sweets share one heading: a boiled lemon-sugar drop and an uncooked meringue-style kiss flavoured with rind. The first is candy work and needs a thermometer; the second is a slow drying job.
- Loaf sugar, powderedLoaf sugar was a hard cone of refined sugar that the cook broke up and pounded. "Powdered" here means pounded fine, which is closest to modern caster (superfine) sugar. It is not confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will behave differently in a boiled syrup.
- The hinge: syrup temperature, not five minutesFor the first version, five minutes of boiling tells you little without knowing the pan and the heat. A saturated lemon-and-sugar syrup is usually taken to somewhere in the firm- to hard-ball range (roughly 245-265F) for a drop that holds its shape; below that it stays sticky, and much above it becomes hard candy and starts to colour. A thermometer is the safest guide, though the recipe itself gives none.
- Acid and grainingThe lemon juice is doing double duty as flavour and as the acid that partly inverts the sugar and can discourage crystallisation. Note that the recipe itself directs constant stirring; if you want a clear rather than an opaque, grained drop, stir only until the sugar has dissolved and then stop.
- Writing-paperUse parchment or a silicone mat; modern paper will fuse to hot sugar.
- The second version's proportions are offThe second version's proportions -- Two ounces of sugar to one egg white is roughly the usual meringue ratio, but the grated rind of three lemons in so small a mixture is a great deal and will slacken the paste and dominate the flavour. The rind of one lemon is closer to workable.
- Fine flourPlain white flour, half a teaspoon, used as a binder. It is not self-raising and there is no leavening in the recipe beyond the whisked white.
- Drying before the fireAn open hearth gave gentle radiant heat for hours. The oven equivalent is 200F with the door propped slightly ajar, for 1 to 2 hours until the drops lift off dry and crisp. Half an hour, as given, is the preparation time, not the drying time.
- Raw egg whiteSlow drying at that temperature will not pasteurise the white. Use pasteurised egg white if the drops are for anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised.
- Yield and keepingYield depends entirely on the size of the drops, and the two versions use very different quantities, so expect no more than a few dozen small ones from each. The tin canister is the right instinct: both versions are hygroscopic and will go tacky within a day in a humid kitchen or in an airtight plastic box with any residual moisture in it.
"Drops" is a straightforward description of the method rather than a proprietary name: sugar work, cordials and medicinal lozenges alike were all dropped from a spoon onto paper to set, and the word covers everything from acid drops to the lemon drops sold by the ounce in Victorian confectioners' shops. The two recipes printed together here show the split in nineteenth-century domestic sweetmaking, between boiled-sugar work borrowed from the professional confectioner and the lighter egg-white "kisses" that a cook could dry at the hearth without a sugar boiler or a thermometer. The costing at a penny an ounce is characteristic of Cassell's, which was written for households keeping a close eye on the weekly books; sugar had been growing cheaper for decades, and the British sugar duties were finally abolished in 1874, by which time a book of this period could treat home confectionery as everyday rather than luxurious.