LEMON CHEESE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 16

LEMON CHEESE

THAT IS NOT WHAT IT IS

CALLED.

The Salford borough analyst in Lancashire has been investigating a problem of profound interest to those who, in defiance of medical opinion, delight lin pastry. He has tried to find out what is and what ought to be the composition of tho mixture with which cheesecakes are filled, says the "Daily Telegraph." Now, tho cheesecake is aa English institution. Our forefathers ate it in tho 15th century, and made it with cheese. In Elizabethan days, according to Cotgrave, it was compounded of cheese and eggs. When Pepys, after his visit to Barnet physic well, recorded in his diary on 11th August, 1667, that he "ate spme of ttie best cheesecakes that ever I ate in my life," he had probably had tarts in which butter and sugar replaced the original cheese, At any rate, when Mrs, Glasse,, whose "first catch your hare" has earned her undying fame as a prudent housewife, wrote her treatise on cookery under the second King Geprge, the lemon cheesecake was more or less standardised as containing, in the words of the Oxford dictionary, "a yellow, butter-like com* pound of milk-curds, sugar, and butter, or a preparation of whipped eggs and sugar," with a dash of Iqmon juice. But the culinary art move* with the times, The modern cook, it seems, buys a ready-made compound known aa "lemon cheese," and puts it into her pastry-mould. This time-saving method appears to be effective, as cheesecakes are still very popular. But the Sulford analyst is by no means satisfied. Starting with the assumption that "lemon cheese" ought to contain butter, eggs, sugar, and lemon, he has analysed some of the compounds sold under that name. He has found that, though the standard, ingredient* have been used, they sometimes form but a very minute prpportion of the whole. A sample whose, makers guaranteed it "to contain pure butter, veal eggs, and other nourishing ingredj. ents, all absolutely pure," actually contained 2 per cent, of butter and 5 per cent, of egg. The warranty in this caje. was not, strictly speaking, untrue, but it was at least casuistical. Another sample was said to be "prepared from lemons, eggs, sugar, butter, etc," and in this case the convenient "etc," meant a third of the whole compound. It is distressing, though not, perhaps, surprising, to find that the venerable cheesecake has degenerated to such a degree that the Salfprd analyst dare not tell us of what it is really composed now that the butter and eggs have nearly vanished, like the original cheese. But it is hare] to see what can be done. The Food Manufacturers' Federation have cautiously declined the invitation from Salfqrd' to define a standard "Jemon cheese." Parliament is unlikely to have time to spare for a lemon cheese reform Bil] just yet, and the Salford Borough Cpu,ncil is in no mood tq go to law about the; matter. Perhaps it will be best (or the Salford analyst tp wait until some dev«ee of phegsecakes has been seized with illness after consuming some particular variety of "lemon chee»e," and then, armed with a copy of Mrs. GJasse, to remonstrate with the manufacturers in private on their defiance of the sound cheesecake tradition.