[Sca-cooks] lemon curd

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Susan Fox-Davis:
>A comparison between commercial lemon curds:
>http://www.detnews.com/2002/food/0211/17/c09-9821.htm
>but nothing is better than home-made, in my ever-humble opinion.
>
>The process of making Lemon Curd is an acid-fat emulsion not unlike 
>the making of Hollandaise Sauce, so my gut-level guess is that it's 
>no earlier.

I'm not so sure about the chemistry of it being quite the same. The 
amount of butter is less than in your average Hollandaise, there's a 
butt-ton of sugar in there to stabilize it, and as far as I know, no 
special care needs to be taken to keep it from breaking (actually 
less of a problem for Hollandaise than most people think... 
nevertheless...). I think it's a pretty simple mixture, kept smooth 
by the sugar, the egg yolks, and the butter itself (butter, under 
normal circumstances, is already an emulsion, at least until you heat 
it).

>As usual, it's MAW-BAH [Me At Work, Book At Home] so if someone 
>could look in Mrs. Beeton's under "Lemon Cheese" as well as Lemon 
>Curd, there might be something there.  Or I'll check later in the 
>day.

I have a newish, non-facsimile coffee-table edition with photos, so 
mine might not be the best edition to check, but the indexed entries 
under lemon are:

Lemon Brandy
lemon juice
Lemon Mincemeat
Lemon Pudding, Baked
Lemon Sauce for Boiled Fowls
lemon thyme
Lemonade
lemons
Lemons, Pickled

Somebody else's MMV. I seem to recall finding early recipes for the 
cheesy form of it in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book and/or Martha 
Washington's Boke of Cookery.

Adamantius