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Lemon Honeycomb
Mix the whites of two eggs with a pint of cream. Sweeten it, and flavour with a little grated lemon-rind. Whip it briskly, and as the froth rises place it upon the strained and sweetened juice of two lemons. Let it remain a few hours before being used. The juice should be put into the glass dish in which the honeycomb is to be served. Time to whip the cream, about half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A syllabub-style froth in which raw egg white is folded into cream, spooned onto lemon juice and left to stand for hours at room temperature. The units and vessels are easy enough to translate; the method is the problem.
- Why this one failsThe egg whites are never heated at any point, and the finished dish is deliberately held for a few hours before serving. Raw shell egg carries a risk of Salmonella, and a sweetened dairy foam left standing (the recipe does not say to chill it) is a favourable medium for bacterial growth. If you want a lemon honeycomb, follow a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or a gelatine-set base.
- No souring to protect itNo acid worked into the froth -- Older whipped desserts of this family often had a charge of lemon juice or wine beaten into the cream itself, which helped the froth stand. Here the juice of two lemons sits beneath the foam as a layer, so the cream and egg white above it are essentially unacidified.
- A pintCassell's is British, so a pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, not the American 16. Recipes copied out of these books without adjustment come up about a fifth short of liquid.
- The cream is not the same creamVictorian cream was unpasteurised and variable in fat. Modern ultra-pasteurised cream tends to behave differently under a whisk, and may not throw off the same coarse, cellular froth the name depends on.
- Half an hour of whippingThat timing assumes a hand whisk and a cold larder, and the instruction to skim the froth off as it rises means the cream is whipped in stages rather than to one stiff mass. An electric beater reaches stiff peaks in two or three minutes, which is a quite different texture.
- Probable cost2s is two shillings, a real sum in a late-Victorian household and a fair guide to how cream was regarded: a pint of it made a party dish for five.
- YieldFour or five servings, presented in a single glass dish rather than portioned, with the lemon juice poured in first so it shows through the foam.
"Honeycomb" here is a description of the texture, not an ingredient: the froth is lifted off the cream in coarse, air-pocketed spoonfuls that pile up in the glass with a cell-like structure. The dish belongs to the long English line of whips, syllabubs and lemon creams in which cream, sugar, citrus and sometimes wine are beaten to a foam and served in glasses, a fashion running from the seventeenth century through the Victorian supper table. Cassell's, compiled as an alphabetical dictionary of cookery for middle-class households in the later nineteenth century, files it among simple cold sweets that need no oven and no setting agent, only a strong arm and a cold place to stand — which is precisely the assumption, a cool larder and same-day eating, that makes it unsuitable for reproduction now. Note too that the gelatine-set "honeycomb mould" of English nursery cookery is a different dish, sharing only the name for the texture.