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Lemon Cheesecakes
809. Mix four ounces of sifted lump sugar with four of butter, and gently melt them; then add the yolks of two and the white of one egg, the rinds of three lemons shred fine, and the juice of one and a half, with one Savoy biscuit, some blanched almonds pounded, and three spoonsful of brandy; mix well; put in puff-paste. Another will keep Twelve Months. To every quarter of a pound of butter put a pound of loaf-sugar broken small, six eggs, leaving out two whites, the rind of two lemons grated, and juice of three, Put all into a pan, simmer till the whole is dissolved, and it is as thick as honey. When cold, put it into a jar and tie it down for use; half a pound of butter makes a good-sized jar. Should it accidentally mould at the top, it will be perfectly good underneath.
Two receipts run together here: a rich lemon filling for small puff-paste tartlets, and a keeping lemon curd meant to sit in a tied-down jar for a year. The first is a workable baked tartlet; the second is a storage method no longer considered sound, and the note about mould is the reason to leave it alone.
- The keeping jar is the problemA butter-and-egg curd sealed under paper and held at room temperature for twelve months is a high-fat, high-protein food with no processing temperature and no hermetic seal. The lemon juice makes it acidic, but that alone will not keep it: modern lemon curd is treated as a short-life refrigerated preserve, not a shelf-stable one, and the twelve-month claim cannot be met safely.
- The mould advice"Should it accidentally mould at the top, it will be perfectly good underneath" is wrong for a soft, high-moisture preserve. Mould in a curd sends hyphae and metabolites well below the visible growth, and its presence signals that other organisms have had the same access. Discard, do not scrape.
- Lump and loaf sugarBoth mean hard refined sugar broken from a cone or block. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, weight for weight; "sifted" simply means it was crushed and sieved to a powder first.
- Savoy biscuitA dry finger-shaped sponge biscuit, of the same family as the ladyfinger or savoiardo. One crushed biscuit gives roughly a tablespoon or so of fine crumb, used to bind and absorb the juice.
- Shredding the rind"The rinds of three lemons shred fine" means the coloured zest pared off and cut to threads. Grating on a fine rasp gives the same effect with less white pith, which is the part that turns the filling bitter.
- Egg count in the first fillingTwo yolks and one white with four ounces each of sugar and butter gives a very rich, loose mixture. Eggs of the period were unstandardised and often smaller than a modern large egg, so a scant measure is probably closer to the original than a generous one.
- Baking the tartletsNo oven heat or time is given. Line small patty tins or a shallow tartlet tray with puff paste, fill about two-thirds, and bake in a hot oven (around 400F is a reasonable modern equivalent) until the pastry is risen and the filling just set and lightly coloured. The quantity should fill roughly a dozen small tins.
English cookery has called these tartlets "cheesecakes" since long before anyone worried that there was no cheese in them. The name carried over from earlier cheesecakes genuinely made with curds, and was then applied to any small filled tart of that shape and size, so that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books cheerfully print lemon, almond and orange cheesecakes containing only butter, sugar, eggs and flavouring. The second receipt here is what later cooks would simply call lemon curd, or lemon cheese — the same butter, sugar, egg and lemon mixture cooked slowly until thick, then potted. Keeping it a twelvemonth in a tied-down jar reflects a household without refrigeration; the airy remark about mould at the top suggests that a degree of spoilage was taken as ordinary.