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Lemon Cocoanut Pie
1 cup milk 1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch 2 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 lemon, juice and rind 1/2 cup Dromedary Cocoanut Heat the milk in double boiler; add cornstarch, which has been dissolved in a little cold water; stir until smooth; then add yolks beaten with sugar and lemon; lastly add the cocoanut. Cook for 5 minutes and pour into a well-baked pie crust. Beat the whites of eggs and add two tablespoons of sugar; spread on top of the filling and brown in the oven.
A cornstarch lemon custard stretched with coconut, built in a pre-baked shell and topped with a soft meringue. The whole thing hangs on cooking the cornstarch long enough that it sets and does not taste raw.
- The hinge: cook the starch outFive minutes in a double boiler is the minimum, and only after the mixture has visibly thickened and lost its chalky taste. Under-cooked cornstarch, and the small amount of amylase in the raw yolks, will leave you with a filling that slackens overnight in the refrigerator.
- Dromedary CocoanutA branded shredded coconut sold moist in tins and packets. Use about 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded or flaked coconut; if you only have sweetened bagged coconut, cut the sugar in the filling to 3/4 cup.
- Temper the yolksThe instruction to add the yolks beaten with sugar and lemon straight into hot milk works only if you first stir a ladleful of the hot mixture into the yolks. Acid plus hot dairy plus direct heat is how you get scrambled egg in a lemon pie.
- The lemonOne lemon means roughly 3 tablespoons juice and 1 to 2 teaspoons finely grated zest. Grate the rind into the sugar rather than the milk, which draws out the oils and keeps bitter pith out of the filling.
- "A well-baked pie crust"I.e. fully blind-baked, dry and lightly coloured throughout. The recipe specifies neither tin size nor temperature; a 9-inch shell suits this quantity of filling, and a modern approach is about 400F with weights for 15 minutes, then uncovered until the base is set and pale gold.
- Browning the meringueThe book gives no temperature. Two egg whites with 2 tablespoons sugar is a lean meringue; beat to firm peaks, spread onto the filling while it is still hot, and seal it to the crust edge all round. Roughly 10 to 12 minutes at 350F gives an even set; a hotter oven around 425F browns in a few minutes but is less forgiving.
- Yield and settingEnough filling for one pie of about 9 inches, six to eight slices. Cool at room temperature for two hours before refrigerating, and cut with a wet knife.
Dromedary was the coconut and date brand of Hills Brothers of New York. Grating fresh coconut was laborious enough that packaged desiccated coconut, which arrived in American groceries in the later nineteenth century, changed what home bakers were willing to attempt. The pie itself is a straightforward cornstarch-and-yolk lemon meringue of the sort that filled American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward, with the coconut folded in as the novelty; the pattern of thickening milk with cornstarch, enriching it with yolks, and spending the leftover whites on a meringue lid is thrift as much as it is dessert.