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Lemon Cheese
1 large lemon 1/2 cup sugar 2 oz. butter 1 egg Rub lump sugar on lemon rind to get out juice. Dissolve butter and add juice, sugar and well beaten egg. Cook in double boiler for a few minutes.
— Mrs. James Tattersall
This is lemon curd under an older English name, and it is a small batch — roughly enough to fill a half-pint jar. The whole recipe hinges on gentle heat: the egg must thicken without scrambling.
- "A few minutes" is the wrong instruction"A few minutes" is vague -- Cook over barely simmering water, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon, around 170-175F; in practice this usually takes longer than two or three minutes. Take it off the moment it thickens; much above 180F the egg begins to curdle and the curd turns grainy.
- Rubbing sugar on the rindThe instruction says to rub lump sugar over the lemon skin to draw out the oil (the recipe says "juice" but means the fragrant oil in the zest). Sugar cubes still work; alternatively grate the zest finely and stir it in with the sugar. Do this before juicing, while the fruit is firm.
- The sugar is counted twiceIs the sugar counted twice? -- The recipe does not say whether the lumps rubbed on the rind come out of the half cup or are extra; the simplest reading is that they are part of it. Weigh out 100 g (1/2 cup) of sugar, take your cubes from it, and the rest goes in the pan.
- 2 oz. butterFour tablespoons, or half a stick — a weight, not a fluid measure. Unsalted is the usual choice, though a pinch of salt sharpens the flavour.
- One large lemonExpect about 3 tablespoons of juice. Taste before the egg goes in and add juice if it seems flat.
- Strain and coolPush the finished curd through a fine sieve to catch any set egg and the zest, then cover the surface directly with plastic wrap so no skin forms. It thickens considerably as it chills.
- KeepingThis is a fresh, egg-based preserve with no canning step. Refrigerate and use within about a week; it is not shelf stable however it is jarred.
- ServingYields roughly 3/4 cup. Traditional on bread and butter, in tart shells, or spread between the layers of a plain sponge.
"Lemon cheese" and "lemon curd" were interchangeable names in British and Anglo-Canadian kitchens through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the word cheese used loosely for any thick, set preserve turned out of a mould or crock — as in damson cheese or apple cheese — rather than anything dairy. The trick of rubbing a lump of sugar over the peel to capture the oil is older than the zester and shows up in punch and pudding recipes well before this book; it extracts the aromatic oil without any of the bitter white pith. Its appearance in a church-society compilation like the Philathea Cook Book, credited to a named contributor, places the recipe squarely in that tradition.