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Lemon Cheese Cakes
Put four or five ounces of butter into a basin to melt, and work in four ounces of crushed and sifted loaf sugar. Then add the yolks of two and the whites of one egg, the finely-chopped peel of three and the juice of two lemons, one large crushed Savoy biscuit, a few pounded blanched almonds, and three tablespoonfuls of brandy. Line some patty-pans with puff paste, put a little of the lemon mixture in each, and bake in a quick oven.
An English lemon curd tartlet filling, written for a cook who already knows how to line patty-pans. The proportions are sound; only the vessels, the sugar and the oven need translating.
- Butter, softened not liquidButter, softened rather than fully liquid -- "put into a basin to melt" is usually read as standing it somewhere warm until it is soft enough to work the sugar in, though some period receipts do melt the butter outright. Softened is the easier reading to work with, as the sugar creams in more readily.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was a hard refined cone, crushed and sifted for baking. Use caster or superfine sugar, 4 oz by weight (about 1/2 cup plus a little).
- Savoy biscuitA dry sponge biscuit of the ladyfinger type. One large one crushed is roughly 1/4 cup of fine crumbs, which help bind the filling.
- Lemon peelZest only, finely grated or very finely chopped, from three lemons; any white pith turns the filling bitter. Three lemons' zest to two lemons' juice is deliberate, and gives the sharp aromatic edge.
- AlmondsSweet blanched almonds, pounded fine, about a tablespoon or two. Do not substitute bitter almonds, which some period recipes call for and which are not safe to use.
- Patty-pansSmall tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches across; a standard 12-cup muffin tin stands in well. Fill them no more than two-thirds, as the mixture rises and the puff paste lifts under it.
- A quick oven425 to 450F. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry rim is browned and the centres are set but still slightly soft; they firm as they cool.
- YieldEnough filling for about a dozen small tartlets. Serve at room temperature the day they are made, as the pastry softens overnight.
The name is the puzzle: no cheese is involved. In British usage "lemon cheese" was the ordinary term for what is now called lemon curd, the thick preserve of butter, sugar, eggs and lemon, and cheesecakes of this sort were small pastry cases baked with a curd filling long before the word attached itself to anything set on a crumb base. Similar receipts run through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery books, sometimes with true curds from soured milk and sometimes, as here, with butter and egg alone. The brandy and pounded almonds are the flourishes of a kitchen working at the small, rich end of the dessert table.