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Lemon Cream Pie
Heat to boiling point one cup of water, adding juice and grated rind of two lemons with one cup of sugar. Stir well together and add one tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in cold water Let this boil up once then remove and cool. Have the under-crust baked by the time the above is cool, then add to the mixture the beaten yolks of three eggs, place the custard in the crust and bake one-half hour. When done remove from oven, let cool, then place on top a meringue made of the whipped whites of the eggs and onehalf cup of sugar, and brown in oven.
A standard turn-of-the-century lemon meringue pie, written for a cook who already knew what a pie looked like. Two points need attention: the thickener is light by modern standards, and the meringue is put on cold filling, which invites weeping.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe names no tin. One cup of water plus lemon juice and three yolks would sit thinly in a 9-inch shell, giving perhaps six to eight slices.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives none, only 'bake one-half hour' and 'brown in oven'. In a modern oven a moderate 350F will set the custard in half an hour; the meringue browns at 350-375F in 12-15 minutes, or in a few minutes at 425F if you want colour rather than a dried-through meringue.
- The cornstarch is scantOne tablespoon to a cup of liquid gives a soft set, with the half-hour bake and the yolks doing the rest of the thickening. If you want a slice that stands up cleanly, two to three tablespoons is nearer modern proportions.
- Cool the base before the yolks go inThis is the hinge. Beaten yolks stirred into a boiling cornstarch base curdle on contact. The instruction to cool first is doing real work; alternatively temper the yolks with a ladle of the hot mixture before combining.
- Meringue on cold fillingModern practice spreads meringue over filling that is still hot, and seals it right to the crust edge. Spread on a cold custard, as written here, the underside of the meringue never cooks and the pie weeps a layer of syrup within a few hours.
- Grating the rindTake only the yellow zest; the white pith beneath is bitter. Supermarket lemons are usually waxed, so scrub them in hot water first. Note that the recipe boils juice and rind with the water; holding them back until off the heat is a modern change, not what is written.
- Meringue proportionsHalf a cup of sugar to three whites is on the sweet side but standard. Whip to firm, glossy peaks, and add the sugar gradually once the whites are foamy or it will sink and leach out during baking.
- Blind-baking the shell"Have the under-crust baked" means fully blind-baked, with weights, before the filling goes in. The filling adds little further browning to the base in thirty minutes.
Lemon meringue pie as we recognise it belongs to the nineteenth century, and depends on two things arriving in the ordinary kitchen at once: reliable commercial cornstarch, sold in the United States from the 1840s onward, and cheap imported lemons carried north by rail and steamer. Earlier lemon puddings and cheesecakes leaned on eggs and butter alone for body; cornstarch let a cook stretch two lemons into a full pie with a clean, sliceable set. The separated egg — yolks into the custard, whites beaten with sugar for the top — uses the whole egg in one dish, and it is tempting, though not certain, to read that as thrift as much as decoration.