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Lemon Creams or Custards
INGREDIENTS for 12 glasses.-5 oz. of loaf sugar, 2 pints of boiling water, the rind of 1 lemon and the juice of 3, 6 eggs. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Make a quart of lemonade in the following manner:- Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water, having previously, with part of the sugar, rubbed off the lemon-rind and add the strained juice. Strain the lemonade into a saucepan and add the eggs, which should be well beaten; stir this one way over the fire until the mixture thickens, but do not allow it to boil; and serve in custard glasses or on a glass dish.
After the boiling water is poured on the sugar and lemon, it should stand covered LEMON ICE. for about 1/2 hour before the eggs are added to it, that the flavour of the rind may be extracted.
TIME. hour to make the lemonade; about 10 minutes to stir the custard over the fire.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A thin pouring custard set with whole eggs and flavoured with lemon, essentially a sweetened lemonade thickened over gentle heat. Everything depends on keeping it below the boil.
- Do not let it boilAcid plus whole egg curdles readily. Keep the pan over low heat, or use a bowl set over barely simmering water, and pull it off the moment it coats the back of a spoon (about 165-175F). If it does break, straining and a quick blitz will sometimes rescue it.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones or blocks, broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute; 5 oz is about 3/4 cup.
- Rubbing off the rindRubbing a lump of sugar over the lemon skin draws out the oil and is genuinely better than grating for a clear custard. Finely pared zest steeped in the hot syrup does the same job, and is easier to strain out.
- The half-hour steepThe instruction that arrives late in the original is important: let the sweetened lemon water stand covered for about 30 minutes before the eggs go in, otherwise the flavour is all juice and no perfume.
- Strain twiceStraining -- The recipe strains the juice, and then the lemonade into the saucepan, to remove rind and pips. Straining again after cooking is not in the original but will catch any threads of set egg.
- Six eggs to two pintsThat is a light, barely-thickened custard meant to be drunk or spooned from a glass, not turned out. If you want it thicker, use yolks only rather than adding more whole eggs.
- Yield and servingTwelve small custard glasses, or six modern servings. The recipe offers custard glasses or a glass dish; it does not say whether to serve warm or cold, though it thickens further as it cools. The quart of lemonade base is simply the two pints of water called for in the ingredients.
- TimingThe stated time for making the lemonade is illegible in this text; the recipe does specify about 1/2 hour of covered standing to draw out the rind, then about 10 minutes of stirring over the fire.
Mrs Beeton's lemon creams sit in a long line of English lemon possets and "lemon custards" that go back well before the nineteenth century, when citrus was a costly import and a single lemon's rind was worked hard for its oil. The recipe is telling about Victorian domestic economy: the average cost of ninepence is set down beside the ingredients, and the sugar does double duty as sweetener and as a tool for extracting zest, a trick usually credited to confectioners and still recommended by pastry cooks. It also shows the period's fondness for serving custard as a drink or a spoonable cream in small glasses rather than as a sauce, part of the same family as the syllabubs and whips that filled a supper table.