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Lemon Pies
One cup of sugar, two tablespoons of cornstarch, one cup of boiling water, butter half the size of an egg, the juice and grated rind of one lemon. Cook together until clear, first moistening the cornstarch in a little cold water. When cool add the yolks of two eggs. Cover a pie dish with a crust, and bake without the filling. Use the whites of two eggs beaten stiff with two tablespoons of powdered sugar for the top, and brown lightly in the oven.
— Mrs. Chas. E. Nichols
A cornstarch lemon filling in a blind-baked shell, finished with a thin two-egg meringue. The method as written leaves the yolks barely cooked, which is the one thing worth changing.
- Cook the yolks, don't just cool themAdding raw yolks to a cooled filling and browning the meringue lightly will not bring them to a safe or properly thickened state. Beat the yolks in a bowl, temper in a little of the hot filling, return everything to the pan, and cook two to three minutes more over low heat until it reaches about 170F and coats a spoon.
- Butter half the size of an eggRoughly 1 to 2 tablespoons, on the order of 25-30 g. Stir it in at the end, off the heat, for gloss.
- One lemonA modern lemon gives roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons of juice, which is right for one cup of sugar; add the grated zest with the sugar so the oils have time to bloom.
- "Until clear"The cornstarch slurry turns from milky to translucent and glossy as it gelatinizes. Let it bubble a full minute after that point or the starch will thin back out as the pie sits.
- Blind bakingLine the shell, dock it, weight it, and bake at 425F for about 15 minutes, then 350F until the base is dry and colored, another 10 to 15 minutes. The recipe gives no temperature or method beyond 'bake without the filling'; an unweighted shell will slump.
- Powdered sugar in the meringueNineteenth-century powdered sugar was simply finely ground sugar, without cornstarch. Superfine or caster sugar is the closer match; commercial confectioners' sugar works but adds a little starch.
- Browning the meringueTwo tablespoons of sugar to two whites is a very lean meringue that weeps easily. Spread it so it seals to the crust all round and bake at 400F for 6 to 8 minutes, or 325F for 15 to 20 for a drier, more stable top.
- YieldThe quantities suit a smaller pie, roughly 8 inches, rather than the 9-inch standard today; six modest slices. The recipe names no dish size.
Cornstarch lemon pie of this kind belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century, when boxed cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple and cooks began using it in place of the older custard-and-flour thickenings. It let a household stretch a single lemon and two eggs into a full pie, with the whites doing double duty as the top rather than going into the filling. The contribution is signed with a contributor's name in the usual fashion of subscription and community collections, where the measurements assume shared knowledge (butter judged against an egg, doneness judged by clarity) because the audience was expected to have watched someone else make it.