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Lemon Pudding
10 egg yolks 1/2 lb. sugar 3 lemons (juice) 1 lemon (grated rind) 1 ounce gelatine 3/4 cup warm water 10 egg whites, beaten stiff 1 cup cream, whipped Whip the yolks, sugar, juice and rind of lemon very well, cook over boiling water until thick. Add gelatine dissolved in warm water. Add whites of eggs whipped very stiff. Chill well. Serve with whipped cream. Serves 6.
A gelatine-set lemon sponge of the kind that filled the dessert column of interwar menu books. The construction is the problem: the yolks are cooked, but ten stiffly beaten whites go in raw and the pudding is only chilled from there.
- The whites are never cookedTen egg whites are folded into a mixture that has already been taken off the heat, then simply chilled. Nothing in the finished pudding reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the volume of aerated raw white is large relative to the warm base, so residual heat does nothing. This is why the dish should not be made from these directions; use a current recipe if you want a lemon sponge.
- Long, cold holding makes it worseCold holding does not fix it -- The pudding is set with gelatine and chilled until firm. Chilling suspends the problem rather than solving it: the whites are still raw when the dish is served.
- An ounce of gelatinePowdered gelatine is now sold in 7 g (1/4 oz) envelopes, so one ounce is roughly four of them - a very firm set by modern taste. Gelling strength also varied between brands and forms, so the weight alone is not a reliable guide.
- Half a pound of sugarEight ounces of granulated sugar is a generous cup, closer to 1 1/8 cups by measure. This recipe mixes systems, weighing the sugar while measuring the water and cream by cup.
- "Cook over boiling water"This means a double boiler, not a pan set directly on the flame. The yolk, sugar and juice base is a lemon curd in all but name and thickens well below the boil; direct heat curdles it.
- The stated yield is wrongThe stated yield looks low -- Ten yolks, ten whites and a cup of whipped cream is a lot of dessert for six, and the recipe will almost certainly stretch further than that.
This is the old lemon sponge - the lemon-and-egg mixture set with gelatine and lightened with beaten whites - of a type common in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century dessert chapters. Once packaged granular gelatine became a pantry staple, the labour of calf's-foot jelly and isinglass fell away, and cold set puddings of this kind became easy to produce at home. A dish like this can be made ahead and finished with whipped cream at serving, which suited a household cooking to a plan.