Lemon Meringue

Two separate receipts share one heading. The first is a bread-crumb custard pudding with a jelly layer under its meringue; the second is closer to a lemon curd baked in pastry. Neither gives a temperature, and the second gives no baking time at all.

• The hinge: bake the custard gentlyBoth fillings are egg custards and both curdle if pushed. Set the oven at 325F and pull the pudding when the centre still wobbles slightly; carryover heat finishes it. A quick oven will give you a weeping, grainy filling that no amount of meringue will hide.
• Meringue browningThe meringue goes on at the end and needs only a hot brief pass — 400F for 8 to 10 minutes, or a few minutes under a broiler watched constantly. Spread it so it touches the rim of the crust or dish all the way round, which is what keeps it from shrinking back and leaking.
• "New milk" and "sweet milk"New milk is fresh, unsoured whole milk; sweet milk is the same, named to distinguish it from the buttermilk or clabber also on hand. Whole milk works for both. The cream in the second receipt would have been unhomogenised and thick — heavy cream is the nearest thing.
• MeasuresA pint of breadcrumbs is 2 cups, loosely packed and soft, not dried crumbs; a quart of milk is 4 cups. That ratio makes a soft, spoonable pudding rather than a sliceable one, so bake it in a buttered 2-quart dish and expect 8 servings.
• The jelly layer"Fruit jelly or stewed apples" is spread on the baked custard while it is still warm, before the meringue. Warm the jelly slightly so it spreads without tearing the custard skin, and keep the layer thin — a thick sweet layer under sweet meringue overwhelms the lemon.
• "A rich paste"This means a butter-rich short pastry, and the second receipt assumes you have one and know how to line a dish with it. Blind-bake the shell before the filling goes in, or the wet lemon mixture will leave the base raw.
• The second filling is very sweetTwo cups of sugar to six eggs, half a cup of butter and the juice of only one lemon is sweeter and less sharp than a modern lemon meringue. If you want the tartness we now expect, the juice of two or three lemons is closer to current taste, and the rind is doing most of the flavouring work as written.
• Egg count for the meringueThe second receipt reserves two whites and says only that they be "mixed with sugar"; it names no quantity, so borrow from the first receipt and beat them to soft peaks with about 4 tablespoons of sugar, added a spoonful at a time once they are foamy. Two whites is a thin covering for a full pie — three or four gives the depth a modern cook expects.