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Lemon Tartlets
The juice and grated rind of two lemons; two cups of sugar; two eggs, and one cup of sponge cake crumbs Beat thoroughly till smooth; put into twelve patty-pans lined with paste and bake till the crust is done.
A lemon curd-style filling thickened with cake crumbs rather than butter or cornstarch, baked in its shell. The whole thing hangs on the crumbs: they are what keep two lemons' worth of juice from soaking the pastry.
- Patty-pansThese are shallow tartlet or muffin cups, roughly 2 1/2 inches across. A standard 12-cup muffin tin lined with thin pastry rounds does the job; the filling should come no higher than three-quarters up the side.
- Oven heatThe original leaves it to judgment. Bake at 375F until the filling is set and no longer wobbles in the middle and the pastry edges are pale gold, about 20 to 25 minutes.
- Sponge cake crumbsDry, plain sponge or ladyfingers crumbed fine, rather than fresh moist cake or dried breadcrumbs. Fresh crumbs tend to pack down and make the filling heavy; stale sponge absorbs the juice and gives a result somewhere between a curd and a small pudding.
- The sugarTwo cups to two eggs is very sweet by current taste, though the sugar also helps raise the temperature at which the eggs set and so guards against curdling in a hot oven. Reducing it to about 1 1/4 cups gives a sharper tart; cutting it much further may make the acid mixture more prone to curdling before it sets.
- Grating the rindTake only the coloured zest. Any white pith carried in with it turns bitter under sugar and heat, and there is nothing in this filling to mask it.
- Rest the mixtureLetting the beaten filling stand about ten minutes before filling the shells gives the dry crumbs time to take up the juice, which helps the mixture stay evenly thickened rather than separating in the tin.
- YieldTwelve small tartlets, one or two per person. They set further as they cool and are best the day they are baked; the crust softens overnight.
Cake crumbs as a thickener were standard economy in Anglo-American baking: leftover sponge, stale bread and even crumbled macaroons were folded into custards and lemon fillings to stretch eggs and give body. Recipes of this type sit in a long line of English lemon cheesecakes and "lemon curd" tarts, where the filling was a sweetened egg-and-lemon mixture baked in a pastry case rather than boiled separately as a curd.