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Lemon Conserve
Also called dariole filling, lemon custard, lemon cheesecake, lemon paste, lemon honey, etc. For filling small puffs, tartlets, pies, and spreading on larger cakes. 1 pound of sugar. 5 or 6 lemons. 4 ounces of butter. 8 yolks and 1 whole egg. Put the butter and sugar in a bright saucepan, grate the yellow rinds of the lemons into it with a tin grater, scraping off with a fork what adheres; squeeze in the juice without the seeds, then stir over the fire till the mixture boils. Beat the yolks and mix them in and stir about ten minutes more, or till cooked and thick like melted cheese.
Lemons that are green, thick-skinned and acrid are not fit for this purpose. It is a rule useful to remember that these mixtures seldom if ever scorch when they have butter in them; they may be left to simmer at the side when time presses.
Conserve aux Amandes.
For small puffs, almond cream cake, tartlets, etc. 8 ounces of almonds. 1/4 pint of water. 8 ounces of sugar. 2 ounces of butter. 4 yolks of eggs. 6 bitter almonds and a little rose extract, if they are convenient.
Scald the almonds and take off the skins, then chop them fine. Boil the sugar and water to a thick syrup; stir n the minced almonds and the butter and boil five minutes.
Then stir in the yolks of eggs and take the mixture off the fire when they thicken. Add the rose flavor when cold.
Two fillings share this entry. The lemon conserve is a straightforward lemon curd and translates cleanly; the almond conserve calls for bitter almonds, which is the reason for the caution above.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are chopped and wetted. Their sale for food use is restricted in the United States and they are not a substitutable ingredient here. If you want an almond-cream filling, work from a current recipe.
- The hinge on the lemon fillingYolks begin to thicken from around 150F, and sugar and acid raise the setting point, which is why curds are usually taken to about 170-175F. Bring the butter, sugar, zest and juice to a boil first, as the recipe says, then add the beaten yolks and hold the pan below a simmer, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon thickly. Ten minutes is realistic over gentle heat.
- "A bright saucepan"This means a clean, unblackened pan. Acidic lemon juice will pick up metal from bare copper or from aluminum; use stainless or enameled cast iron.
- QuantitiesFive or six lemons give roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of juice and several tablespoons of zest — measure the juice rather than counting fruit, since modern lemons vary widely in size. A pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 1/4 pint of water in the second recipe is 1/2 cup.
- Grating the zestThe instruction to scrape the grater with a fork was probably needed because tin graters clogged. A microplane makes this unnecessary, but keep to the yellow only — the white pith is what makes the filling bitter, and the warning about green, thick-skinned, acrid lemons most likely points to pith and underripeness.
- StrainingPass the finished conserve through a sieve while hot to catch any strands of set yolk and the coarser zest. The original does not say to, but it is the difference between a filling that pipes smoothly and one that looks curdled.
- Yield and keepingThe lemon quantity makes a large batch, considerably more than a quart. Refrigerate in a covered jar with the surface pressed flat and use within a week; it is an egg-and-butter custard, not a preserve, despite the name.
- The "melted cheese" testThat is a description of consistency, not an ingredient. Look for something thick enough to hold a furrow when you drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan; it firms considerably as it cools.
The string of alternative names at the top of the entry — dariole filling, lemon custard, lemon cheesecake, lemon paste, lemon honey — is a snapshot of a bakery trade that had no settled vocabulary for a mixture we now simply call lemon curd. "Lemon cheesecake" meant these small curd-filled tartlets in Britain long before it meant anything involving cream cheese, and "lemon honey" survived as a name in New Zealand and parts of Britain into the twentieth century. The entry reads as though addressed to the trade, which may explain the practical asides: the note that butter-rich mixtures rarely scorch and can be pushed to the side of the range when the shop is busy is the kind of thing a foreman tells an apprentice, not a housewife. The paired almond conserve belongs to the same tradition of frangipane-type fillings, where a few bitter almonds could be used to sharpen the flavor of sweet ones — here only if they happen to be convenient — a practice common in nineteenth-century confectionery and since abandoned for good reason.