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Lemon Turnovers
Rub an ounce of loaf sugar upon the rind of a lemon. Crush it, and dissolve it in two table-spoonfuls of milk. Add three dessert-spoonfuls of flour, two ounces of clarified butter, and two well-beaten eggs. Stir all over the fire for a minute. Take a pound of good pastry; divide it into six or eight pieces, and roll each piece out to a round shape, about the size of a saucer. Spread a little of the mixture on one half of the round, fold the other half over, fasten the edges securely, and bake on a buttered tin in a moderate oven. Before serving, sift a little sugar over the turnovers. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Probable cost, a halfpenny each. Sufficient for six or eight turnovers.
A small lemon custard folded into pastry rounds. The whole thing hinges on the filling being cooked and cooled to a thick, spreadable paste before it goes anywhere near the pastry.
- The hinge: thicken, then cool"Stir all over the fire for a minute" is doing more work than it admits. The flour and eggs must come together into a thick pastry-cream that holds its shape on a spoon, over gentle heat and stirring constantly. Spread it while warm and loose and it will run out of the seams as the pastry opens in the oven; chill it first.
- Rubbing sugar on the rindDragging a sugar lump over the whole lemon strips out the peel oils and nothing else, giving lemon scent without acid or pith. Loaf sugar was cut from a hard cone; a rough sugar cube does the job, or grate the zest into an ounce (about 2 tablespoons) of granulated sugar and rub it between your fingers.
- Dessert-spoonfulsA dessert-spoon is two teaspoons, so three of flour is about 2 tablespoons. Two tablespoons of milk and two eggs against that much flour gives a soft custard, not a stiff one.
- Clarified butterTwo ounces (about 57 g) of butter with the milk solids and water removed. Ordinary melted butter will work but adds a little water; ghee is a close modern substitute, though it is cooked longer and tastes nuttier.
- A moderate oven350F / 175C. If you use puff pastry rather than shortcrust, start at 400F / 200C for the first ten minutes to set the lift, then drop to moderate for the remainder.
- A pound of good pastry450 g of shortcrust or puff, bought or made. Six rounds the size of a saucer means roughly 5 inches across; eight means smaller and thinner. Seal with a damp or egg-washed edge and press with a fork, and cut one small vent in each so steam does not blow the seam open.
- Yield and servingSix to eight turnovers, best eaten warm rather than hot, with the sifted sugar added after they have stopped steaming so it does not dissolve. The "halfpenny each" is a costing note for a Victorian housekeeper, not a modern guide.
Cassell's belonged to the era of the great household dictionaries, arranged alphabetically and giving a 'probable cost' for each dish, so that a mistress could check what a dish ought to cost before her cook spent the money. The filling here is a small enriched pastry-cream, the same flour-thickened custard that fills an eclair, scented by the old confectioner's trick of abrading sugar against citrus peel to capture the rind oils — a technique associated with the punch and cordial trade, and now often called oleo-saccharum.