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Lemon Cream Candy
The same as rose cream candy. Flavor with oil of lemon and use no coloring. This is as white as cake icing.
This is a one-line variation, not a standalone recipe: it depends entirely on the rose cream candy formula printed nearby, which in books of this type means a boiled sugar fondant that is cooled and worked white. A few notes on what that entails.
- The base recipe is the recipeNothing here tells you the sugar, water or acid quantities — you must read the rose cream candy entry first and simply swap the flavoring. Treat this page as an addendum.
- Oil of lemon is not lemon extractOil of lemon is the cold-pressed peel oil, sold today as lemon essential oil or bakery-grade lemon oil. It is considerably stronger than alcohol-based extract; a few drops flavors a full batch, and extract substituted drop for drop will taste weak.
- Add the flavor off the heatCitrus oil is volatile and its flavor suffers if it is stirred into boiling syrup. Add it after the syrup has cooled to lukewarm, just before or during the working stage.
- "Cream candy" means fondant"Cream candy" usually means fondant -- In books of this period the term generally denotes a boiled fondant, though it was also used for pulled candies. Fondant is normally boiled to the soft-ball stage, around 238-240F by a modern thermometer, then poured out, cooled, and worked with a spatula or paddle until it turns opaque and stiff. No temperature is given here; follow the rose cream candy entry for the boil. Modern cooks can substitute a stand mixer with the paddle for the marble slab and scraper.
- Why no coloringThe instruction implies a contrast with the rose version, which was presumably tinted; the lemon one is left plain. The recipe makes the point itself: properly worked fondant is "as white as cake icing."
- Let it ripenFreshly worked fondant is grainy and firm. Wrapped airtight and left a day at room temperature, it softens and smooths as the moisture equalizes — this is when it cuts or centers cleanly.
- HumidityFondant work fails on damp days. Sugar at this concentration draws water from the air, leaving centers that weep and refuse to set.
The flavors themselves come from the nineteenth-century druggist's shelf as much as the kitchen; oils of lemon, rose, peppermint and wintergreen were sold as pharmaceutical essences and passed easily into candymaking. Fondant of this kind was the foundation of the American cream candy business, serving as bonbon centers, cut squares, and the pale filling inside chocolate-dipped creams.