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Lemon Jam
This is used to eat with toast or hot cakes, or as sauce for puddings. Mix the grated rind and juice of 3 lemons with 1 pound sugar, 5 eggs,--the yolks only,--and 1/2 ounce of butter. Cook in a double boiler, stirring often, until thick. Set away to cool. Will keep a week or more, in a cold place.
This is lemon curd under an older name, and it behaves like a custard rather than a jam. The instructions are sound; the only things missing are numbers.
- Keep it below a simmerThe hinge of the whole recipe is heat control. Yolks set around 160-170F and scramble above about 180F, so the water in the lower pan should stay at a bare simmer and never touch the bowl. Pull it off the heat when it coats the spoon and holds a line drawn by a finger.
- 1/2 ounce of butterThat is one tablespoon. It is there for gloss and body, not richness, so there is no reason to increase it.
- 1 pound sugarAbout 2 1/4 cups granulated. That is a high proportion by modern taste for three lemons; modern versions often use less, though the sugar also raises the temperature at which the yolks set and so helps guard against curdling.
- LemonsThree medium lemons give roughly 1/2 cup juice and 3 tablespoons of zest. Grate the rind before juicing, and take only the yellow layer; the white pith turns the jam bitter.
- Strain and coverPass the finished jam through a fine sieve to catch any strands of set yolk and the coarser zest, then lay plastic wrap directly on the surface as it cools to stop a skin forming.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough to fill two half-pint jars.
- "A cold place" means the refrigeratorSealed and chilled it keeps one to two weeks, which matches the original claim once you read "cold" as 40F rather than a stone larder. Despite the name it is not a shelf-stable preserve: the egg and butter content puts it outside ordinary home water-bath canning practice, so do not can it. Freeze it if you want it to last longer.
- As pudding sauceIt sets firm when cold. Thin it for spooning over steamed or sponge puddings with a little cream or hot water, whisked in off the heat.
Lemon curd of this kind appears in English household books through the nineteenth century, often under the names lemon cheese or lemon honey, and was made in small batches for tea bread, tartlets and pudding sauce rather than for the store cupboard, since eggs and butter will not keep the way a boiled fruit-and-sugar jam does. The word "jam" here reflects how it was used at table, not how it was preserved. The same mixture is now sold in jars as lemon curd, stabilised so that it will sit on a shelf, which the original never could.