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Richmond Maids of Honor
(England.) These celebrated cakes, or tarts, were invented by Queen Elizabeth, and are still sold at Richmond.
Beat 2 eggs, add 1 quart of milk, and the juice of a lemon. Set in a pan and skim off the curd. Drain it, mix with yolks of 4 eggs, beaten with the grated rind of the lemon, some sugar to taste,--the lemon can be rubbed on it, in two lumps,--a little cinnamon and nutmeg, 6 ounces currants and 1 glass of brandy. Mix well and fill shells of puff paste. Bake 20 minutes. LEMON CAKES, OR KING HENRY'S SHOE STRINGS. (England.) Beat the yolks of 6 eggs well, add 1/2 pound sifted sugar, the grated rind of a lemon, and 2 tablespoonfuls of orange-flower water. Beat all well, add slowly 6 ounces flour, then whites of eggs beaten stiff, and the juice of a lemon. Pour into ladyfinger tins or on a large pan, very thin; bake 1 hour slowly, and cut in strips.
KING HENRY'S SHOE STRINGS.(Another Recipe.) Mix 1/4 pound flour and 1/2 cup of milk, 1 1/2 ounces butter, juice of a lemon and sugar to taste. Stir on the fire for 10 minutes, take off, and add the beaten yolks of 4 eggs and 2 tablespoonfuls of chopped almonds. Pour into a pan and bake. Cut into strips and dust with sugar.
Three English recipes run together here; the first is the famous Richmond tart, the other two are thin lemon sponge or batter fingers. The Maids of Honour depends entirely on getting a firm curd out of the milk, and the original is silent on the one detail that decides it.
- The curd is the whole recipeBeaten egg, milk and lemon juice will only separate into usable curd if the milk is heated — scald it, take it off the heat, then stir in the acid and let it stand until it breaks. Left cold in a pan it will thicken slightly and never drain. Tip the broken mixture into a cloth-lined sieve and let it drip until it is the texture of thick ricotta; a wet curd will soak the pastry.
- Yield from a quartA quart of milk gives roughly a cup of drained curd, which with the four extra yolks and the currants fills about a dozen tarts in a standard 12-hole bun tin, using rounds cut from a single sheet of puff pastry.
- "A glass of brandy"The recipe does not say what size glass. In cookbooks of this period a wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup, and that is the likely reading. It is a great deal of liquid for a small amount of curd; a tablespoon or two is closer to modern taste and keeps the filling from loosening.
- Rubbing the lemon on sugarThe aside about rubbing the lemon on two lumps of sugar is the older method for extracting zest oil: you abrade the peel against loaf sugar until the lumps are yellow and saturated. Grated zest does the same job; the sugar-rubbing gives a cleaner, more perfumed result.
- Oven for the tartsThe recipe gives no oven heat. Twenty minutes suits puff paste baked hot, in the region of 400-425F. The filling should be just set and lightly domed; it will sink a little as it cools, which is correct.
- "Bake 1 hour slowly"A slow oven is usually reckoned somewhere around 300-325F. An hour at that heat suits the thin sponge poured onto a large pan, drying it enough to cut into strips without tearing. In ladyfinger tins check from 20 minutes.
- Currants and orange-flower waterCurrants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants. Orange-flower water is still sold in Middle Eastern groceries and pharmacies; it is potent, and two tablespoons in a six-yolk batter is assertive but authentic to the period.
- The second Shoe StringsFlour, milk, butter and lemon stirred on the fire for ten minutes is a panade — a stiff cooked paste — enriched with yolks after it cools slightly. Spread it thin, bake at 350F until set and dry at the edges, then cut while warm; it firms up quickly and will crack if cut cold.
The Maid of Honour tart is genuinely a Richmond speciality, sold to nineteenth-century day-trippers and still made by Newens on Kew Road, which claims a long descent for its recipe. The origin story attaches itself to the Tudor court at Richmond Palace and Hampton Court, and is told in several incompatible versions hem as as here; or Henry VIII came upon Anne Boleyn's maids of honour eating them and named them; or a maid of honour's recipe was bought and kept secret. All of it is traditional rather than documented, and the naming of the lemon fingers as "King Henry's Shoe Strings" belongs to the same vein of Tudor-flavoured invention. What is real is the technique: a fresh acid-set curd cheese, made at home in an afternoon from milk and a lemon, baked in pastry with dried fruit and spice. That family of curd tarts is old and widespread in England, surviving today as Yorkshire curd tart, and the courtly names, attested in English cookery well before the Victorian period, were something Victorian sellers traded on for a very plain thing.