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Lemon Cream
Beat well the yolks of two eggs, add to them one pint of thick cream, one-fourth pound of powdered sugar, and the thin rind of a lemon; turn all into a saucepan, boil up once, remove from the fire, and stir until cold. Squeeze the juice of a lemon onto a dish, pour over the cream, and serve.
A stirred custard barely thicker than pouring cream, set at the last moment by lemon juice rather than by long cooking. Two details in the original wording decide whether it works.
- "Boil up once" is the riskTwo yolks in a pint of cream can curdle if held at a rolling boil. Heat over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the spoon (around 175-180F on a thermometer); pull it at the first sign of a bubble breaking the surface rather than letting it boil.
- Add the acid coldThe lemon juice goes onto the serving dish and the cooled cream is poured over it. Acid stirred into hot custard curdles it; here the juice meets the cream cold, sharpening it at the table rather than splitting it.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream, 36% fat or more. Modern "light cream" or half-and-half will not give the body the recipe assumes.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means granulated sugar ground fine, with no starch in it. Superfine or caster sugar is the closer match; today's confectioners' sugar carries cornstarch that will dull the flavour. Four ounces is a little over half a cup.
- Thin rindPared zest only, in wide strips, with none of the white pith. Steep it in the cream as it heats, then strain it out before cooling.
- Stir until coldThis is not fussiness. Stirring as it cools stops a skin forming and keeps the texture even; a bowl set over ice speeds it considerably.
- YieldAbout a pint of finished cream, enough for four small glasses or cups. Serve cold, the same day.
Lemon cream belongs to a long line of English boiled creams that carried on into nineteenth-century American cookery. The pairing of a cooked cream with lemon juice added only at the moment of serving recalls the possets and whipped creams of earlier English receipt books, where acid rather than egg does some of the work of setting. Oscar Tschirky's collection was published in 1896.