Recipe: Grandma Cameron's Lemon Curd

Grandma Cameron's Lemon Curd

According to my husband, there are two things his late,
Scottish grandmother did perfectly: bake shortbread and cook lemon curd. A couple months ago, at one of the annual Scottish festivals we attend, a lovely woman selling homemade treats promised him that their lemon curd would be “every bit as good” as his grandmother’s. Being a good sport, he took the bait and we came home with a jar.

The woman had plenty of reason to be proud of her product. Her lemon curd was delicious. “Zesty, sweet and creamy,” just as she promised.

But was it as good as Grandma Cameron’s recipe?

This weekend, we pulled out the old handwritten index card and set out to see for ourselves.

The ingredients

The recipe appears deceptively simple: 1 cup sugar, 1 stick butter, 3 eggs, and the juice and rind of 3 lemons. Everything is cooked together in a double boiler for about a half-hour and then cooled.

Could it really be so easy?

I gathered everything, juiced the lemons and fished out the seeds. I wasn’t sure how to incorporate the rind, so I sliced off sections, avoiding the bitter pith, and tossed them into the double boiler with the eggs, butter and sugar.



On the stove

The mixture began to thicken after about 20 minutes, and I kept cooking on low for 15 more minutes. I transferred the hot mixture, which was now the consistency of pudding, into a ceramic bowl and put it into the refrigerator to cool. It tasted spot-on to my palate, but I left the final verdict to my husband. He said the homemade curd tasted exactly like his grandmother’s, but stopped short of declaring it better than the one we had bought.

So, it would seem the gracious lady at the Scottish festival was right after all. It really was “every bit as good” as his grandmother’s.

But when the recipe is as simple as this, why wouldn’t you want to make it yourself?
It will definitely be making an appearance in our home again.

The recipe

GRANDMA CAMERON’S LEMON CURD
(as it appears exactly on her original recipe notecard)

1 cup sugar
1/4 lb. butter
3 eggs, well-beaten
3 lemons

Use rind and juice of lemons, put all in top of double boiler, and keep water at simmer. Cook 20 minutes to half an hour, until thick like mayonnaise. Yields 3 small tumblers full.

MY NOTE: Yield will vary according to the juiciness of your lemons. My yield was about 2 cups. In future batches, I would recommend bundling the rind segments in cheesecloth for easier removal.