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Lemon Jelly for Cake
Juice 1 lemon 2/3 C sugar 1 t flour 1 egg yolk 1/2 C water Cook until thick enough to spread.
Mrs. R. S. Triggs.
Mrs. R. S. Triggs.
As printed, this entry is incomplete: the ingredient list has been truncated, and what survives is an egg yolk, half a cup of water, and a single line of method. Read it as a fragment of a standard lemon cake filling rather than a working formula.
- What is missingA "lemon jelly" filling of this era needs lemon juice and grated rind, sugar, and a starch or a second egg to set it; butter is usual. Cooked as printed, one yolk in half a cup of water yields a thin, unsweetened, unflavoured custard. Use a complete lemon filling recipe if you want the dish.
- "Lemon jelly" is not gelatineIn cake-and-filling sections of this period the word jelly means a thick, spreadable cooked lemon mixture, what is now generally sold as lemon curd. No gelatine or pectin is involved.
- C means cupThe abbreviation C here is a cup, so 1/2 C is about 120 ml.
- Cook until thick enough to spreadThat is the hinge, and it means a bare simmer with constant stirring, ideally over a double boiler. Egg yolk begins to set around 150F and scrambles past about 180F, so the mixture should coat a spoon and hold a line drawn with a finger, not boil.
- Acid and starchStarch -- If you rebuild the filling, a teaspoon or two of cornstarch slaked in the cold water stabilises it against curdling and gives the body a spreadable filling needs.
- YieldEven scaled up to a usable formula, a single-yolk filling covers about one layer of an eight- or nine-inch cake. Period lemon fillings intended for a two-layer cake generally call for more egg than this.
- KeepingCool the filling with a piece of waxed paper or plastic directly on the surface to stop a skin forming, and refrigerate. An egg-and-lemon filling is best used within two or three days.
Church and society cookbooks like this one were compiled by soliciting cards from members of the congregation, set in type more or less as received, and sold to raise money for the parish. The method may explain a good deal about this page, with its duplicated "Mrs. R. S. Triggs" line and its vanished lemon and sugar. Lemon jelly, lemon butter and lemon cheese were all names for the same thickened lemon-and-egg mixture, which in the nineteenth century was spread on bread, spooned into tart shells, and layered into cakes long before the term lemon curd became standard in American use. Its presence in a section devoted entirely to icings and fillings reflects the era's fondness for the layer cake, which needed something between the layers.