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Jelly for Cake
1 lemon bruised and strained. 1 cupful sugar. 1 large apple. 1 egg. Beat the egg and mash the apple fine, grate the lemon peel, then mix all together; put into a can or cup and set into a pot of water. Let boil until it is cooked, and use as you would for common jelly cake.--Mrs. W. McF.
This is a lemon-apple curd, thickened by one egg and set between cake layers in place of jam. It comes together in a bowl over simmering water, and the only real risk is scrambling the egg.
- The hinge: gentle heat, constant stirringWith a single egg and no butter or starch to buffer it, the mixture curdles quickly over direct or hard heat. Keep the water at a bare simmer, stir throughout, and pull it off at about 170-175F, when it coats a spoon.
- "A can or cup set into a pot of water"This is an improvised double boiler, a familiar way of managing a delicate mixture in a kitchen without a purpose-made bain-marie. A heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water does the same job and lets you stir more easily.
- "1 lemon bruised and strained"Bruised means rolled and pressed to loosen the juice; strained means seeds and pulp removed. Grate the zest off first, while the peel is still intact, then juice it. One lemon gives roughly 3 tablespoons of juice.
- "Mash the apple fine"The apple is raw here, and mashing raw apple is unrewarding work. Grate it on the coarse side of a box grater instead, or pulse it in a food processor. A tart, firm variety such as Granny Smith holds up better than a soft eating apple.
- SugarA cupful is about 200 g. Against one lemon and one apple this is a sweet filling by modern taste; three-quarters of a cup still sets and lets the lemon through.
- Timing"Let boil until it is cooked" means roughly 10 to 15 minutes of stirring over the water bath, until thick enough to hold a line drawn through it. It firms considerably as it cools, so stop while it still flows.
- Yield and useAround a cup and a half, enough to fill one or two layers of an 8- or 9-inch cake. Cool it completely before spreading, or it will soak into the crumb.
- KeepingAn egg-thickened filling with no butter or preservative belongs in the refrigerator, covered, and is best used within three or four days.
"Jelly cake" was one of the workhorse cakes of the American nineteenth-century household: thin layers of plain butter or sponge cake stacked with jelly or jam between them, no icing required, and no need for the confectioner's skill that a frosted cake demanded. Jelly itself was seasonal and precious, put up in summer for the year. This recipe is essentially a thrift-minded lemon curd: the apple supplies bulk, the lemon supplies the flavor and acid, and a single egg does the thickening that a long boil with fruit juice would otherwise accomplish. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why so many entries end, as this one does, in a set of initials rather than a byline; the book preserves the ordinary domestic shortcuts of its contributors alongside their party dishes.