Lemon Cordial

History

Lemon Cordial appears in the "Cordials, &c." section of Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-Wife; Or, Methodical Cook, first published in 1824 and widely regarded as the first regional American cookbook. As printed, the recipe cuts six fresh lemons into thin slices and boils them in a quart and a half of milk "until the whey is very clear," passes it through a sieve, then adds one and a half quarts of French brandy and three pounds of powdered loaf sugar, stirs until dissolved, lets it "stand to refine," and bottles it with a little thin-pared yellow lemon rind in each bottle. The method the recipe uses — curdling milk with citrus and heat and straining out the solids to leave a clear liquid — is the clarification technique documented in eighteenth-century milk punch, where curdling "could be accomplished through the addition of alcohol or acid, by heating, or both, such as in a recipe recorded by Benjamin Franklin in 1763 that used brandy and lemon added to hot milk." The Virginia House-Wife ran to nearly 500 recipes; although Randolph was herself a knowledgeable cook, the majority of the labor in her kitchen was done by enslaved Black women. The sources consulted here do not document any specific social-status meaning, regional association, or place-to-place lineage for this particular recipe.

Ingredients

• 6 whole fresh lemons
• 1.5 quart milk
• 1.5 quart French brandy
• 3 pounds powdered loaf sugar

Instructions

1. Cut six fresh lemons into thin slices and put them into a quart and a half of milk. Boil until the whey is very clear, then pass through a sieve.
2. To the strained whey, add one and a half quarts of French brandy and three pounds of powdered loaf sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
3. Let it stand to refine. Pare some of the yellow rind of the lemons very thin and put a little in each bottle, then bottle the cordial.