Regency-era Lemon Cream

Ah, lemons - tart little treasures that brightened up more than just the complexion of a powdered duke in Jane Austen’s time. While today we squirt lemon juice into our water bottles and Instagram the results, back in the 18th and early 19th centuries, lemons were doing real work.

We're talking about fighting scurvy on the high seas and making appearances in dainty Regency drawing rooms, preferably with a dollop of cream. When life gave Regency households lemons, they made lemon cream (and the navy fought scurvy). As I happen to have a fruiting tree in my lovely old garden at the moment, I thought it was time for a recipe.

The Regency era's superfruit

You may be thinking, “Surely citrus wasn’t knocking about in Georgian England like a bowl of after-dinner mints?” In fact, lemons had already sailed their way into the British culinary and medicinal consciousness by the mid-1700s.

Enter James Lind, a naval surgeon in 1747, who performed what can only be described as the world’s most citrusy clinical trial. He gave lemon juice to scurvy-ridden sailors, land watched these men gain back their health. Vitamin C hadn’t been discovered yet, but these chaps went from dying to dandy with a little citrus zing.

By the time Jane Austen was composing witty repartee and mentally friend-zoning Mr Collins, lemons were not just for naval emergencies. They’d become fairly common in households, especially the kind with mahogany sideboards and servants trained not to roll their eyes in front of guests.

Lemons were used in a range of Regency foods.

The sweet side of lemons

Naturally, it wasn’t long before lemons were conscripted into dessert duty - and thank heavens they were, because from those dainty cookery books and household journals emerged this delightfully zesty concoction: Lemon Cream.

This recipe, straight from Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), is the kind of thing your Regency-era hostess would serve between a scandal and a quadrille.

Regency Lemon Cream Recipe

When you’re fresh out of suitors but still rich in citrus.

Ingredients:

• 1 pint of thick cream

• Yolks of 2 eggs (beaten well, as if they've just insulted your bonnet)

• 4 oz of fine sugar (as sweet as Lizzy's second suitor)

• The thin rind of one lemon

• Juice of one lemon

Method:

1. Take your thick cream and mix it lovingly with the well-beaten yolks, sugar, and lemon rind.

2. Boil this up gently, whispering encouraging things like “you’ve got this” while stirring.

3. Remove from heat and stir until almost cold — not Regency gossip cold, but lukewarm scandal cold.

4. In a separate dish or bowl, pour in your lemon juice.

5. Now pour the warm cream mixture over the juice and stir until the whole thing is fully cool.

6. Spoon daintily into a parfait glass and serve with a bow or curtsey.

Lemon cream for your Regency table.

So there you have it - lemons: the Regency’s multitasking marvels. Whether curing scurvy or starring in post-ball desserts, they were the humble hero of the Georgian pantry. They also scented many a high-born lady's corsetry and were thinly sliced for use in tea.

The next time you’re zesting a lemon into your cake batter or squeezing it into your 21st-century wellness tea, raise your teacup to Mrs Rundell, the sailors of HMS Lemon Drop, and all the Regency cooks who knew that a splash of citrus could cure just about anything, from vitamin deficiency to a boring supper.

Vive le lemon.