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Lemon Puffs
Beat and sift one pound and one-quarter of sugar and mix with it the peel of two lemons grated fine. Whip the whites of three eggs to a firm froth, add it gradually to the sugar and lemon and beat it all together for one hour. Make it up in any shape you please. Put the puffs on oiled paper, on a tin, put them in a moderate oven and bake six or seven minutes.
This is a meringue-family confection rather than a cake: no flour, no fat, and roughly four parts sugar to one part egg white by weight. The mixture behaves like a stiff royal icing that puffs and crisps in the oven.
- "Beat and sift" the sugarSugar of this period often came as a hard loaf or in coarse crystals and had to be pounded and sieved before use. Use superfine (caster) sugar, or pulse granulated sugar in a grinder; 1 1/4 lb is about 2 3/4 cups.
- An hour of beatingThat timing assumes a hand whisk and a bowl of gritty sugar that needs to dissolve. In a stand mixer, 8 to 12 minutes on medium-high is enough — stop when the paste is glossy white and no longer feels sandy between finger and thumb.
- Only the zestGrate the yellow peel of two lemons finely and take none of the white pith, which is bitter and will show as specks. The oil in the zest is the entire flavouring; there is no juice in this recipe and adding any will slacken the mixture.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually read as 325-350F. At that heat these colour quickly, so watch from minute five; this style of puff is also baked lower, around 300F for 15 to 20 minutes, for a whiter, drier result.
- Oiled paperSubstitute baking parchment, unoiled. A silicone mat also works. Greased paper alone can let a sugar-heavy paste spread and stick.
- "Any shape you please"The paste is stiff enough to pipe through a plain or star tube, or to drop in teaspoonfuls and shape with a wet finger. Keep them small — walnut size — since the interior stays soft and a large puff will collapse.
- YieldAbout 30 to 40 small puffs, depending on size. They are meant to be crisp outside and chewy within, eaten the day they are made.
- StorageSugar meringues are hygroscopic and go tacky in a humid kitchen. Cool completely, then keep in an airtight tin with a dry biscuit; do not refrigerate.
Lemon puffs of this kind appear in English cookery books well before the twentieth century -- sugar beaten with egg white and flavoured with grated peel is the same basic idea behind the various sugar drops and biscuits sold by confectioners. An hour of steady beating was the price of a light, dissolved paste before mechanical mixers were common in domestic kitchens. Grated lemon rind turns up often in nineteenth-century sweets. The recipe uses whites only, and may have suited a cook who had three yolks left over from a custard or a sauce.