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Lemon Cheese Cake (II)
Mrs. Carson.
Two cups sugar, half cup butter, three-quarters cup sweet milk, whites of six eggs, three cups flour, three teaspoons Cook's Friend baking powder. SAUCE FOR LEMON CHEESE CAKE-Grated rind and juice of two lemons, yolks of three eggs, half cup butter, one cup sugar; mix all together, and set on stove, and cook till thick as sponge, stirring all the time; then use like jelly between the cakes.
A white layer cake with lemon curd between the layers. The original gives no pan size, oven temperature or baking time, so the notes below fill the gaps.
- Lemon cheese means lemon curdThere is no cheese in this at all. "Lemon cheese" is an old British name for the thick lemon-and-egg-yolk preserve now generally sold as lemon curd.
- The hinge: keep the curd below a simmerYolks, butter, sugar and lemon juice set at around 170-175F and scramble not far above that. Cook it in a heavy pan over low heat, or in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. "Thick as sponge" means thick enough to coat the spoon and hold a line drawn through it; it firms further as it cools.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand of long standing. Nineteenth-century powders were not necessarily of the same strength as a modern double-acting powder. Three teaspoons for three cups of flour works out at one teaspoon per cup, which is within the usual modern range.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in recipes leavened with saleratus. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- Oven and pansThe recipe gives neither pan size nor oven heat. A workable modern equivalent: 350F, batter divided between two 9-inch round pans and baked 25-30 minutes, or three 8-inch pans for 20-25, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Method the book assumesNo mixing directions are given. The usual sequence for a cake of this type: cream the butter and sugar, add the milk and flour alternately, then fold in the six whites beaten stiff. Folding the whites in last is what keeps this a white cake rather than a dense one.
- Six whites, three yolksThe cake takes the whites and the filling takes three of the yolks, which leaves three yolks over. Custard or mayonnaise is one place to use them.
- YieldA two-layer 9-inch cake, twelve to sixteen slices. The filling makes roughly a cup and a half, enough for one thick layer or two thin ones; refrigerate any that is left and use it within a week.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children; nearly every receipt in it carries a contributor's name, as this one carries Mrs. Carson's. The format was borrowed from American charity cookbooks of the same decade, and the result is less a curated volume than a snapshot of what a particular circle of households actually baked. Lemon cheese itself is older and English, a way of turning butter, sugar and eggs into a keeping preserve with lemon as the acid; it appears in British cookery books well before it became a standard cake filling. The named baking powder is the other period marker. Chemical leavening was still new enough in the 1870s that cooks specified the brand, perhaps because strengths were thought to vary from one maker to another, though the reason is not documented.