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Lemon Conserves
Wash and dry ten lemons. Pare the yellow rind off clear of the white, and beat it in a mortar with double its weight of sugar. Pack closely in a jar and cover with part of the sugar.--Mrs. T.
This is a lemon sugar rather than a jam: the oil in the zest is driven into the sugar by pounding, and the sugar keeps it. Nothing is cooked, and the whole thing hinges on getting only the yellow rind and no pith.
- The hinge: no whitePare the zest thinly enough that no white pith comes with it. Pith is bitter and, unlike zest, holds moisture, which is what turns a jar of lemon sugar mouldy. A vegetable peeler, held almost flat, does this better than a knife.
- QuantitiesTen average lemons yield roughly 2 to 4 oz (60-115 g) of pared rind, so "double its weight of sugar" means about 4-8 oz (120-230 g) for the pounding, plus more to pack and cover. Expect a pint jar's worth.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does the same work in seconds: pulse the rind with the sugar until the sugar is damp and pale yellow and the peel is reduced to flecks. The mortar gives a slightly better texture, as pounding bruises the oil out rather than cutting it.
- Unwaxed fruitMost supermarket lemons carry a food-grade wax and often a fungicide. Since the entire product is rind, buy unwaxed or organic fruit, or scrub the lemons in hot water and dry them thoroughly before paring.
- Packing and keepingPress it down hard so no air pockets remain and finish with a sealing layer of plain sugar on top. Kept in the refrigerator it will hold for months; at room temperature, watch for any darkening or musty smell, which means moisture got in.
- Using itA spoonful stirred into tea, over pound cake batter, into whipped cream, or rubbed into softened butter for shortbread. It is a flavouring, not a spread, and a little is a good deal.
- The bare lemonsThe recipe leaves you with ten naked lemons. Juice them promptly and freeze the juice in ice cube trays; without the rind the fruit dries out quickly.
Lemon sugar of this kind belongs to an old class of kitchen economies aimed at capturing the volatile oil in citrus peel, which fades quickly once the rind is pared. Before bottled extracts were cheap and reliable, cooks rubbed a lump of loaf sugar over a whole lemon until it was saturated with oil, or pounded the pared rind with sugar in a mortar, as here; the sugar acts as both abrasive and preservative, drawing the oil out and then holding it. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, is full of these one- and two-line entries signed with an initial, and their brevity suggests they were written for cooks who already knew what a mortar was for and needed only the proportions.