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Lemon Mixture for Puddings
Pare as thin as possible the rinds of four large lemons and mince them fine; squeeze the juice out of half a dozen lemons and strain it. Put one-half pound of butter into a saucepan to melt, then put in the peel and juice with two pounds of loaf sugar, the beaten whites of eight and the yolks of twelve eggs, stir the mixture over a very slow fire until thick; then pour it into a jar, mix in one wineglassful of whisky or brandy, cover with the parchment and tie down tightly.
This is lemon curd, built on the generous Waldorf scale — the batch fills several jars and was meant to sit in the pastry larder as a ready filling for tarts, puddings and cake layers.
- The hinge: never let it boil"A very slow fire" is the whole technique. Set the pan over simmering water and stir constantly; the mixture thickens at about 170-175F and the eggs scramble not far above that. If it does break, straining while hot rescues most of it.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone and is simply granulated sugar today. Two pounds is about 4 1/2 cups, which reads as very sweet by modern taste; the juice of six lemons is what balances it.
- A wineglassfulRoughly 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. In a batch this size the spirit reads as a flavouring rather than a dominant note.
- Zest, not pith"Pare as thin as possible" means taking the coloured layer only — a rasp grater does the job faster than paring and mincing, and any white pith carried over turns the finished curd bitter.
- Egg proportionsTwelve yolks to eight whites is deliberate: the yolks give richness and body, the whites lighten it slightly. Keep the ratio if you scale down — roughly three yolks to two whites.
- Yield and scalingAs written this makes something in the region of two quarts. Quartering the recipe gives about a pint, which is a sensible household quantity.
- StorageParchment tied down over a jar was a dust cover, not a seal, and this is an egg-and-butter preparation. Refrigerate it and use within a week or two, or freeze it; do not treat the original instruction as a shelf-storage method, and do not water-bath can it without a tested recipe.
Lemon curd — called lemon cheese or lemon butter in older English kitchens — is often said to take its name from a time when "curd" meant any thick, set preparation of eggs and cream or butter, though that reading is conjectural; by the nineteenth century it had settled into the form here: juice, zest, sugar, butter and eggs cooked gently to a spoonable cream. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel who gave his name to this 1896 collection, was not a cook by trade but the manager of the Waldorf's dining rooms, and the book reflects a large hotel kitchen's habits rather than a home cook's: base preparations are made in bulk and held for the pastry department, which is exactly what a "mixture for puddings" is. The whisky or brandy goes in at the end, off the heat, adding flavour that would have cooked away earlier.