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Maids of Honour
Delicious cheesecakes so called are to be had in perfection at Richmond-on-Thames. We think the following recipe genuine. Beat two eggs, and mix them with a quart of new milk; add the eggs and milk to a quart of boiling water in a saucepan; pour in lemon-juice, and remove the curd, as it rises, to a sieve to drain; mix the curd with the yolks of four eggs, previously well beaten, a large cupful of clotted cream, the rind of a lemon, rubbed off on sugar, a little pounded cinnamon, a quarter of a nutmeg, grated, six ounces of currants, well washed and dried, and a glass of brandy. Mix well, and bake in patty-pans, buttered and lined with a light French puff-paste. Time, about twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for twenty-four cheesecakes.
The hinge of this recipe is the curd: everything else is flavouring. If the milk does not separate cleanly you have nothing to fill the tartlets with, so get that stage right before assembling anything.
- Making the curdTwo beaten eggs and a quart of milk go into a quart of boiling water, then lemon juice is added to force separation. Add the juice of one to two lemons gradually and lift the curds out with a slotted spoon as they surface; let them drain in a sieve or muslin for 20-30 minutes until they stop dripping but are still moist.
- QuartsCassell's is working in imperial measure, so a quart is 40 fl oz rather than the American 32. Two US quarts plus an extra cup each of milk and water gets you there; the exact ratio matters less than having enough hot water to keep the mixture from scorching.
- Clotted creamA large cupful means about 8 oz of genuine clotted cream, thick enough to stand in a spoon. Mascarpone is the nearest widely available substitute; ordinary double or heavy cream is thinner and will loosen the filling, so use a little less of it if that is all you have.
- Rind rubbed off on sugarAn older technique for extracting zest: rub a sugar lump or two tablespoons of granulated sugar over the whole lemon until the sugar is yellow and fragrant, then add sugar and all. Finely grated zest plus the same sugar does the same job. Note that this is the only sugar in the filling, so the tarts are barely sweet by modern standards.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Modern packaged fruit needs no washing; a brief soak in warm water or brandy, then a thorough drying, keeps them from drawing moisture out of the filling.
- BrandyThe recipe says only 'a glass'; read as a wineglassful, that is about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz by the period's usual reckoning. That is a great deal of alcohol for a filling of this size; 1 to 2 tablespoons reads as authentic without dominating.
- Patty-pans and pastryPatty-pans are shallow tartlet or bun tins, roughly 2 1/2 inches across. "Light French puff-paste" is puff pastry; line the tins, chill, and fill no more than two-thirds full, as the mixture rises.
- OvenNo temperature is given, but puff pastry needs real heat: 400-425F, with the tins on a preheated baking sheet so the bases set. Twenty minutes is about right; the filling should be puffed, set at the centre and lightly browned.
- Yield and servingTwenty-four small tarts. They are best eaten warm on the day they are baked, when the pastry is still crisp and the curd filling has not begun to weep.
Maids of Honour are tied firmly to Richmond-on-Thames, and the tale attached to them, traditional rather than documented, has the tarts served to Henry VIII's court at nearby Hampton Court, with the queen's maids of honour giving them their name. What is verifiable is that by the nineteenth century the pastries were a Richmond speciality sold by local bakers, and Newens's shop is said by the firm itself to have traded on the name since the mid-1800s, which is why Cassell's positions this less as a formula than as a reconstruction: the editors say only that they "think the following recipe genuine." The method itself is older than the legend's dressing suggests. Curd tarts made by souring fresh milk, draining the curds and enriching them with eggs, spice and dried fruit run through English cookery from the medieval period onward, and survive in Yorkshire curd tarts and in cheesecakes of the pre-cream-cheese kind. A household that could get new milk and clotted cream had no reason to buy curd; splitting a quart of milk in a saucepan was a straightforward job.