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Honeycomb Cream
(Switzerland.) Strain and sweeten the juice of 2 lemons and an orange, add 1 1/2. pints of hot cream or rich milk, set these in a pan of hot water, stirring until thick, then pour from a height into a glass dish, so as to froth it well. Set on ice, and when firm, serve.
This is a lemon posset in all but name: acid from citrus sets hot cream without gelatine or eggs. Two things decide whether it works — the fat in the cream and the heat.
- The hinge: fat and heatAcid sets cream far more reliably when the cream is rich (roughly heavy-cream fat content, 36% or better) and properly hot — steaming, at or near a simmer. The recipe's alternative of "rich milk" is much less likely to thicken, and may stay thin and slightly grainy.
- PintsIf the measure is imperial, 1 1/2 pints is 30 imperial fl oz, or about 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 US cups of heavy cream. Two US pints is a little more than that.
- Unstated sugar"Sweeten" is left to the cook. For this volume of cream, 3/4 to 1 cup of granulated sugar dissolved in the hot cream is the usual proportion for a posset; the citrus is sharp and needs it.
- Juice quantityTwo lemons and an orange yield roughly 2/3 cup of juice, a fairly generous proportion of acid for this much cream. Strain it properly — pulp and pips will show in the finished glass.
- Order of workingModern practice is to heat and sweeten the cream first, then stir in the strained juice off the heat. The recipe's bain-marie method is gentler and slower; keep the water hot enough that the mixture actually thickens.
- Pouring from a heightThe recipe pours from a height expressly to froth the mixture, and the aerated foam sets as a pale bubbled layer over the smooth cream; this may well be the sense of "honeycomb." Pour in a thin steady stream from well above the dish.
- Setting"Set on ice" means chilling the dish over ice. In a refrigerator, allow four hours at least; overnight is better. It sets soft, like a thick custard, not like a jelly.
- YieldEnough for six to eight small glasses. It is very rich and portions should be modest.
The technique here is far older than the Swiss attribution suggests: curdling hot sweetened milk or cream with wine or ale is the basis of the English posset, documented from the late medieval period onward as a curdled drink; the syllabub, a cream-and-wine dish, is a related but separate preparation. What distinguishes this version is the pouring from a height, which whips air into the setting cream and leaves a bubbled, cellular crust on top — the likely reason, it is often said, for the name "honeycomb." The page in front of us gives only the label "(Switzerland.)", and this cream would not look out of place in an English recipe book of the same period.