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Lemon Cream
Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons. 1 tumbler of sugar. 1 tablespoon butter. 3 whole eggs.
Cook in double boiler until thick as honey and put between cake.
This is lemon curd under an older name, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you knew what a double boiler was for. Everything hinges on temperature control.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe mixture thickens as the egg proteins set, somewhere around 170-175F. Held over water at a bare simmer and stirred constantly, it usually comes together in ten minutes or so, though the time depends on your pan and heat. Direct heat or a hard boil scrambles the eggs and no amount of beating brings it back.
- A tumbler of sugarA drinking tumbler of the period held roughly 8 fluid ounces, so read this as 1 cup of granulated sugar, about 7 oz by weight. Tumblers varied, and if your finished curd tastes too sweet against the lemons, scale back to three-quarters of a cup next time.
- "Thick as honey"A good gauge. Drawn on the back of a spoon, a finger should leave a channel that does not close. It thickens further as it cools, so pulling it slightly early is safer than pushing it.
- Zest without pithGrate only the yellow layer. The white pith underneath is bitter and will not soften in the short cooking. Rubbing the zest into the sugar before you start draws out more of the oil.
- Strain itMrs. Wilson does not say to, but pushing the finished cream through a fine sieve removes any set egg thread and the coarser bits of rind, giving the smooth texture expected of a cake filling.
- Yield and useAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough to fill a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake generously, or two smaller ones thinly. It is equally good in tart shells or on toast.
- Keeping itCover the surface with plastic to stop a skin forming, refrigerate, and use within a week. This is not a preserve despite the sugar; the eggs and butter mean it belongs in the cold.
Lemon curd of this kind — eggs, sugar, butter and lemon cooked gently to a spread — is an English domestic preparation, often called lemon cheese in nineteenth-century cookery books, a name usually explained by its resemblance to a soft fresh curd cheese. It came to American cookbooks as a cake filling above all, which is exactly the use Mrs. Wilson gives it: "put between cake," with no further comment, on the assumption that the reader has two plain layers waiting. Mary A. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia newspaper readers in the years around the First World War, when household cooking columns favored short, unfussy directions and a certain economy of ingredients, and the terseness here is characteristic. The tumbler measure is a reminder of how recently kitchens worked from whatever vessel was at hand rather than a graduated cup.