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Lemon Paste
Squeeze the juice out of some lemons, then boil the rinds until very tender. Drain, scrape out all of the pulp, place the rinds in a mortar and pound them. Put the paste onto a sieve, press it through with a spatula into a preserving-pan, and reduce until thick, weight the pulp, and for every pound use two pounds of loaf sugar. Clarify the sugar and boil to the feather degree, then mix in the lemon paste and boil up again. Spread the paste on plates, put it in the stove for a day, then remove it, cut it into strips, and shape it into any form desired.
This is a fruit paste in the old confectioner's manner — a pâte de citron built entirely from boiled lemon rind and sugar. Almost everything that needs translating here is equipment and sugar terminology.
- Boil the rind long enoughThe hinge of the recipe: the rinds must be genuinely tender before pounding, or the paste stays fibrous and bitter and no amount of sieving will fix it. The recipe gives no time; simmer and test with a knife tip until they yield completely. The juice squeezed out at the start is not used and should be saved for something else.
- "The feather degree"An old confectioner's sugar stage, generally placed at roughly 232-240F (111-116C) on a modern thermometer, between the blow and the ball degrees — the point where syrup lifted on a skimmer blows off in feathery threads. Sources of the period disagree by several degrees, so use a thermometer and treat the figure as a range rather than a precise target.
- Loaf sugar and clarifyingLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, and it was clarified with water and egg white so the scum could be skimmed off. Modern granulated sugar is already pure; dissolve it in water and skim if you like, but the clarifying step serves no purpose now.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow pan, typically copper or brass, chosen for fast evaporation. Any wide heavy-bottomed stainless or enamelled pan works; depth is the enemy, since the pulp must reduce quickly without scorching.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor followed by a fine sieve does the work of pounding and pressing. The sieving is not optional — it removes the last of the pith strings and is what gives the finished paste its smooth cut.
- "Put it in the stove for a day"This means a drying oven or plate warmer, not a baking heat. The lowest setting of a modern oven, around 150F (65C) with the door propped, or a dehydrator, will dry the surface over 8-24 hours until the paste is firm enough to cut. A conventional oven at normal baking temperatures risks scorching or caramelising it.
- Proportions and yieldTwo pounds of sugar to one pound of pulp is a firm-set, keeping sweetmeat rather than a soft confection. The recipe scales to whatever weight of pulp you end up with, so weigh it after reducing and sugar accordingly.
- StorageThe cut strips are usually rolled in granulated sugar and kept in a tin between sheets of paper. A paste this sweet keeps well at cool room temperature; refrigeration tends to make such pastes weep.
Fruit pastes of this kind — quince, apricot, orange, lemon — belong to the older European confectioner's repertoire, where boiled fruit pulp cooked down with sugar to the cutting stage was one of the standard ways of preserving a harvest and furnishing the dessert table. The technique is the same one that produces Spanish membrillo and French pâte de fruits, and it reached American hotel kitchens through the French pastry tradition. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, gathered several such confections into his 1896 compilation, and their presence there is a reminder that a large hotel of the period would likely have run its own confectionery department: petits fours, candied peels and fruit pastes were probably made in-house for the dessert service and the after-dinner tray rather than bought in.