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Orange Cheeseckaes
Blanch a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and pound them in a mortar with a dessert-spoonful of orange-flower water. Add four ounces of finely-sifted sugar, half a pound of fresh butter, the rind, pulp, and juice of a small Seville orange which has been boiled in two or three waters until tender, then freed from the pips and skin, one candied orange pounded to a paste, the yolks of five and the whites of two eggs. Beat the mixture thoroughly, put it into patty-pans lined with good puff-paste, and bake in a quick oven. Time to bake the cheesecakes, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 10d. for this quantity. Sufficient for two dozen cheesecakes. (See also CHEESECAKES.)
A Georgian-style almond and bitter-orange tartlet filling, carried into the late Victorian kitchen unchanged. Nothing in it is difficult, but three things decide the result: the orange must be boiled long enough to lose its bitterness, the almonds must be ground without turning oily, and the pastry cases must be small.
- The hinge: boil the Seville orange properlyA whole bitter orange simmered "in two or three waters" means changing the water once or twice as it turns bitter, and cooking until a skewer goes through the peel with no resistance — usually an hour or more for a small fruit. Undercooked, the peel stays harsh and chewy and the whole batch tastes medicinal.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F (200-220C). Fifteen minutes at that heat sets the filling and colours the puff paste; the mixture is rich in butter and sugar and will darken fast at the edges, so check at twelve minutes.
- Patty-pansShallow tartlet or bun tins, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches across, not muffin cups. Two dozen is the stated yield, which tells you how thin the pastry should be — about a tablespoon of filling each.
- AlmondsA quarter pound of blanched sweet almonds is about 3/4 cup whole, or 1 1/4 cups ground. If using a processor rather than a mortar, pulse with a spoonful of the sugar to keep the nuts from pasting into butter. The orange-flower water is there partly as the pounding liquid.
- Candied orange"One candied orange" means one whole candied fruit or the full peel of one, around 3 to 4 oz, pounded to a paste. Modern chopped mixed peel is a poor substitute; use good candied orange peel and work it with a little of the sugar.
- ButterHalf a pound (225 g) of fresh butter, meaning unsalted. Cream it soft rather than melting it, or the filling will separate and leak into the pastry base.
- EggsFive yolks and two whites. Eggs of the period were generally smaller and less standardised than today's large ones, so four yolks and two whites from large eggs may sit closer to the original proportion of egg to fat.
- Cost and serving1s 10d for two dozen reflects prices of the 1870s, not a guide to anything now. Serve at room temperature the day they are baked; the puff paste softens overnight.
English "cheesecakes" of this period frequently contain no cheese at all — the word had drifted from the medieval and Tudor curd tart to mean almost any small filled tartlet baked in patty-pans, with lemon, orange and almond versions standing beside the older cheese-curd kind. The Seville orange here is the point of the recipe: a bitter Spanish variety with a short winter season, valued for its aromatic peel and sharp juice, and better known now for marmalade than for baking. Boiling it whole in several changes of water to tame the bitterness was the standard treatment, used equally in orange puddings and preserves. Orange-flower water, distilled from the blossom of the same bitter orange, was a common English flavouring from the seventeenth century until vanilla displaced it. Cassell's, compiled as an alphabetical dictionary rather than a personal collection, preserved dozens of such inherited eighteenth-century sweets alongside its cross-references, which is why the entry ends by pointing the reader back to the general article on cheesecakes.