Lemon Pie III
Yolks 4 eggs 6 tablespoons sugar Few grains salt 1 1/4 cups milk Whites 4 eggs 7/8 cup powdered sugar 1 lemon Beat yolks of eggs slightly, add sugar, salt, grated rind of lemon, and milk. Line plate with paste as for Custard Pie. Pour in mixture. Bake in moderate oven until set. Remove from oven, cool slightly, and cover with Meringue III made of whites of eggs, powdered sugar, and lemon juice.
A custard pie baked in its shell, then finished with a lemon meringue after the filling has set. The hinge is oven temperature: this is a milk-and-egg custard, and it will curdle and weep if pushed hot.
- Oven temperature"Moderate" in this period is usually taken as somewhere around 350F. Custard fillings are more forgiving still at 325F, which gives a smoother set with less risk of the filling separating from the crust.
- Powdered sugarIn turn-of-the-century American books "powdered sugar" usually means finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar is the right substitute for the meringue.
- 7/8 cupThat is 1 cup less 2 tablespoons, roughly 175 g of granulated sugar. It is a large amount of sugar for four whites, which gives a dense, marshmallowy meringue rather than a light one.
- The crust"Line plate with paste as for Custard Pie" means a single bottom crust, raw when filled; the recipe does not give a plate size, though the quantity suits a standard 8- or 9-inch plate. Custard soaks pastry, so partially blind-baking the shell at 400F until dry, then cooling it before filling, is the usual modern insurance.
- Testing the setBake until the filling is set an inch or two in from the edge and the centre still trembles slightly, about 35 to 45 minutes. A knife inserted midway between rim and centre should come out clean; carryover heat finishes the middle.
- Finishing the meringueThis page stops at "cover with Meringue III" and gives no browning instruction; any direction for that would sit with the meringue recipe itself. Spread it so it seals to the crust all round, then bake until the peaks colour -- a slower oven and a longer stay is the safer route with a set custard beneath.
- The lemonOne lemon supplies both the grated rind for the custard and the juice for the meringue. Zest before juicing, and keep the zest fine so it does not streak the set custard.
- YieldOne pie, six to eight servings. Cut it cold; a warm custard pie will not hold a clean edge.
Custard pie and lemon meringue pie meet in this recipe, which is really the former wearing the latter's hat: the lemon lives in the rind of the filling and the juice of the topping, not in the cornstarch-thickened curd that most people now expect from a lemon meringue. Baked custards in pastry are among the oldest sweet pies in the English tradition. Numbered variants like this one, cross-referring to a numbered meringue elsewhere in the book, are characteristic of the Boston Cooking School style of instruction, where recipes were built from standard components a student was assumed to have already mastered.