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Lemon, Solid
Rub the rind of a large fresh lemon with four ounces of sugar, crush the lumps, and put them into a saucepan with half an ounce of isinglass and half a pint of cream. Heat gently until the isinglass is dissolved, then add another half-pint of cream and a wine-glassful of brandy. Stir the mixture for three or four minutes, strain it through a thick fold of muslin, and when cold add the juice of half a lemon. Pour it into a mould that has been soaked in cold water, and put it aside till set. If there is any difficulty in turning it out, loosen the edges with a knife, and dip the mould for an instant in hot, but not boiling, water. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for a pint and a half mould.
A moulded lemon cream set with isinglass — essentially a panna cotta a century before that name reached English menus. Two things decide whether it works: the setting agent and the moment the lemon juice goes in.
- Add the juice cold, and only coldAcid dropped into hot cream will curdle it, and the recipe is explicit that the juice of half a lemon goes in after straining, once the mixture is cold. Stir it through gently and pour into the mould at once, before the gelatine begins to grip.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass, made from sturgeon swim bladders, was the standard clarifying and setting agent of the period. Its strength varied by batch, so no conversion is exact; half an ounce of isinglass is broadly replaced by half an ounce of powdered gelatine (about 4 level teaspoons) or seven or eight leaf sheets for 20 fl oz of cream. Bloom it in cold liquid first rather than tipping it dry into warm cream.
- Never let it boil"Heat gently until the isinglass is dissolved" is the whole instruction. A boil will scald the cream and can weaken the set; keep it below a simmer, and dissolve rather than cook.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint here is 10 fl oz, not 8, so the two additions give 20 fl oz of cream in total. A wine-glassful is roughly 2 fl oz. The pint-and-a-half mould is about 30 fl oz, which the mixture sits inside with room to spare.
- Rubbing the rindThe sugar is meant to be in lumps, dragged over the lemon skin to strip the oil — the old way of extracting zest oil without bitter pith. Finely grated zest rubbed into caster sugar and left ten minutes does the same job, and the muslin straining catches it either way.
- Setting timeThe recipe gives no time, only "put it aside till set", which in a cold larder would have meant several hours. Four to six hours in the refrigerator is the practical minimum; overnight is better.
- Turning outWetting the mould, as directed, is what lets the cream release. The instant dip in hot water should be genuinely brief — a few seconds — or the outer layer melts and the surface slumps.
- YieldA pint and a half of rich cream serves six to eight in small portions. It is very rich; a plate of thin biscuits or some sharp stewed fruit alongside is welcome.
"Solid" is doing specific work in this title. Victorian cookery books listed whole families of creams, and the distinction was structural: whipped creams were beaten to a froth, snow creams were piled up loose, and a solid cream was one set firm enough to be turned out of a mould and cut. Isinglass, the collagen taken from the swim bladders of sturgeon, was the setting agent of choice for such dishes because it gave a clear, clean set. Cassell's, published for middle-class households with a keen eye on expense, prices the dish at 1s 6d and excludes the brandy from the reckoning, as was its routine practice in costing dishes exclusive of wine and spirits he luluxury item, and that a reader might reasonably leave it out. By the end of the century commercially packaged sheet and powdered gelatine had largely displaced isinglass in the kitchen, and it retreated to its other historic job: clarifying beer and wine.