Perhaps the most important thing about this lemon is that it came from the lemon tree in our front yard. Not the one we bought shortly after we moved in, the third we have cultivated, without much success, since we lived in Spain. It came from the tree we discovered the second summer we were here, after clearing out a lot of brush that perhaps had covered up the tree for a year--though I don't think there were any lemons on it to cover up. My personal theory is that it wasn't until we brought in the new lemon tree we had purchased that this lemon tree got pollinated and started to produce lemons. Or maybe it felt threatened, or motivated? Not much to feel threatened about, as the lemon tree that we bought is now smaller than when we bought it, with fewer branches and, so far, no new lemons. Maybe the pollen only blows in one direction.
My best recipe for citron fromage is from Danish Cooking, by Nika Standen Hazelton, published by Penguin Books in England in 1967. When I got it, from a dear friend as a wedding gift, I was just beginning to understand about the great divide in publishing English-language books, i.e., that there are books published in the United States, and there are books published in the UK, and the rights for one geographic area do not extend to the other. The publishing history of my "Penguin Handbook" shows that it was "first published in the U.S.A. by Doubleday in 1964" and that it was "Published, with revisions, in Penguin Books, in 1967." Those revisions, I now know without a doubt, had to do with conversion of the measurement of ingredients to the metric system, as well as revising spelling from American to British, and otherwise adapting from American to UK ingredient names and kitchen practice.
So I have always "translated" when using this cookbook. My recipe contains a penciled note, "1/2 cup," next to the listing for "4 oz. sugar" and a red ink "1 envelope" next to "2 dessertspoons unflavoured gelatin." I must have always had measuring cups showing ounces, because there is no notation next to "2 fl. oz. cold water"; and "5 eggs, separated" seem to be separated the same on both sides of the Atlantic, though I'll wager that the size of eggs has grown in the past 45 years. The other ingredient that normally would not need any special notation is "juice and grated rind of 2 lemons."
Somehow I didn't think that two jumbo lemons of a pound each were necessary or even advisable. Fortunately I have The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, of about the same vintage as Danish Cooking, but from the U.S. side of the Atlantic. I found a whole section "About Lemons" in its chapter on fruits and fruit desserts. It said that "The juice of 1 lemon makes about 1/4 cup, but yield varies considerably." OK, so I was looking for a half cup of lemon juice, and I didn't really have to be exact.
When I cut my lemon open it looked more like a grapefruit than a lemon. Whether it was authentically a thick-skinned variety of lemon or just overgrown, I don't know. One does not normally give lemons a taste test as you would an orange or mandarin or even a grapefruit. It did have a thick skin and it was large enough that I needed to juice it using the attachment for oranges rather than just the normal lemon juicer. I got 3/4 cup of lemon juice from my one-pound lemon, but that included a couple tablespoonfuls of lemon pulp, so I took out the pulp. Grating the rind of the giant lemon was a bit easier than grating the rind of two normal lemons, but I must say that lemon zesting is not my favorite activity no matter how large the lemon.
Our guests loved the citron fromage, or Lemon Delight, as it is translated in the Danish Cooking book. I was pleased with the result myself, especially since the lemon-gelatin mixture did not separate from the whipped egg whites and settle itself in the bottom of the glass bowl, as it can easily do. We still have a few more giant lemons, though our guests took one home for themselves. It filled up about half the space that the bottle of wine they brought us had occupied.
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