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Lemon Pudding
Half a pound of sugar, half pound of butter, five eggs, half gill brandy, rind and juice of one lemon; beat well the butter and sugar, whisk the eggs, add them to the lemon, grate the peel, line a dish with puff paste, and bake in a moderate oven.
A lemon curd baked in a puff-paste shell, written in the compressed style of its period — the ingredient list carries most of the instruction. A few conversions and one point about the oven will get you there.
- The measurementsHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; half a pound of butter is 2 sticks (225 g). A gill is 4 fl oz in American usage (5 fl oz in British), so half a gill of brandy is roughly 4 to 5 tablespoons — a generous amount for five eggs, and worth cutting back if you want the lemon forward.
- A moderate oven350F. The filling is an egg-and-butter custard and will curdle or weep if pushed hotter; 325F is safer still if your oven runs high.
- Whole eggs, not yolksFive whole eggs are called for, which gives a firmer, more sliceable set than a yolk-only curd. Whisk them only until combined — beating in air produces a soufflé-like crown that sinks and cracks.
- The order that actually worksCream the butter and sugar, whisk the eggs separately, then stir the eggs into the creamed mixture with the lemon juice, zest and brandy. Adding acidic juice to soft butter alone will make it look broken; it comes together in the oven.
- Puff pasteBlind-bake the lined dish for about 15 minutes with weights before filling, or the wet custard will leave the base pale and soft. A 9-inch pie plate or shallow tart tin suits this quantity.
- Judging donenessRoughly 35 to 45 minutes. The edges should be set and the centre still trembling slightly when the dish is nudged; it firms as it cools. Serve at room temperature.
- YieldOne 9-inch pudding, about eight servings. No sauce is needed.
Lemon puddings of this kind sit halfway between a curd and a cheesecake, and they appear often in English and American household books through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — sugar, butter, eggs and a lemon, baked in pastry, using ingredients any reasonably provisioned kitchen already had. The brandy is characteristic of the older tradition, where spirits were often said to signal richness. Recipes like this one are short, forgiving, and impressive enough to put in front of guests, with the assumption that the reader already knew what puff paste was and how to line a dish with it.