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Lemon Tartlets
Rub a quarter of a pound of sugar in lumps over the rind of a fine fresh lemon, strain the juice over the sugar, and crush it well; then add two ounces of clarified butter, a tea-spoonful of bread-crumbs, and two well-beaten eggs. Line some patty-pans with good puff-paste, three-parts fill them with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1d. each. Sufficient for eight tartlets.
A Victorian lemon curd baked straight into pastry cases, closer to a small lemon cheesecake than a modern tart. The whole flavour rests on the first step, so do not shortcut it.
- Rub the sugar on the rind firstAbrading lump sugar against the whole lemon draws the oil out of the peel into the sugar — the same principle as an oleo-saccharum. Grated zest stirred in later gives a thinner, more bitter result. Let the sugar sit in the strained juice until it is fully dissolved before the eggs go in, or the filling will bake gritty.
- A quarter pound of sugar4 oz, about 1/2 cup plus a tablespoon of granulated sugar. Lump sugar was cut from a loaf; sugar cubes work for the rubbing, or use a rough-cut demerara-free white sugar and press it against the rind with the flat of a knife.
- Clarified butter2 oz of clarified butter: about 4 tablespoons of ghee, or start with roughly 5 tablespoons (2 1/2 oz) of butter, melt it and pour off the milk solids. It should be warm and fluid but not hot, or it will set the eggs on contact.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. Twenty minutes suits shallow tins; the filling should be just set with a faint wobble at the centre. Held longer, the egg tightens and may weep a ring of liquid as it cools.
- Patty-pansShallow individual tart tins, about 2.5 to 3 inches across. A standard 12-cup muffin tin is deeper than intended — the pastry will not crisp as well, and the filling needs a little longer.
- Three-parts fillTake this literally. The egg mixture rises noticeably in the oven and will run over the pastry rim and glue the tartlets into their tins.
- Bread-crumbsA teaspoonful. The recipe does not say fresh or dry, though fine dry white crumbs are the safer reading. They appear to act as a binder and to absorb the butter, and should not be noticeable in the finished tartlet.
- Yield and servingEight tartlets. Best eaten the day they are made, cooled to room temperature; refrigeration softens the puff paste.
Cassell's belongs to the era when "lemon cheesecakes" — small pastry cases filled with a baked curd of lemon, butter, sugar and egg, and containing no cheese at all — were standard English teatime baking, a form documented in cookery books from the eighteenth century onward. The instruction to rub sugar in lumps over the rind reflects the sugarloaf: household sugar still arrived as a hard cone to be nipped into pieces, and a broken lump makes a good rasp for citrus oil. The costing of 1d. each is typical of Cassell's, which priced almost every dish; the price lines are generally understood as an aid to household budgeting.