Lemon Pie
Grate the rind and squeeze the juice of two lemons. Still two tablespoonfuls corn-starch into two teacups hot water, and boil, stirring well. Add three-quarters of a pound of granulated sugar. When cool, add the yolks of four eggs well beaten, then the lemon-juice and grated rind, stirring the whole well together. Line the plates with rich pastry, and pour the mixture in. Bake until the crust is done. Beat the whites of the eggs very light, add six ounces powdered sugar, pour over the pies, set them again in the oven, and slightly brown. This will make two pies.-Mrs. T.M.C. Lemon Pie.
One cupful sugar, one cupful sweet milk, one tablespoonful flour, one tablespoonful butter, three eggs, one lemon. Mix the grated rind and juice of the lemon with the yolks of the eggs and the sugar. Add the milk next, and then the butter and flour. Bake in a paste. After it is cold, spread on the whites of the eggs, frothed and sweetened.-Mrs. McG. Lemon Pie.
Yolks of four eggs, white of one, beaten very light; grated rind and juice of one large lemon; five heaping tablespoonfuls sugar. Bake in an undercrust till the pastry is done. Froth the whites of three eggs with five tablespoonfuls sugar. Spread over the pies and bake again till brown.-Mrs. Col. S. Lemon Pie.
One tablespoonful butter, creamed with two cups of sugar, yolks of six eggs, grated rind and juice of four lemons, four heaping tablespoonfuls flour. Mix well. Add a cupful butter milk, and one teaspoonful soda. Froth and sweeten the whites of the eggs and put them on top the pies.-Mrs. N.
Four cooks' versions of the same pie, printed one after another, and they are not interchangeable: the first is a cornstarch-set curd, the second and third are baked custards, and the fourth is a soda-raised filling closer to a lemon chess pie. Read all four before choosing, and note that the typesetter's "Still two tablespoonfuls corn-starch" is "Stir."
- Teacup and pound measuresA teacup is conventionally reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though the book does not define it, so "two teacups hot water" is roughly 1 1/2 cups. Three-quarters of a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 2/3 cups; six ounces of powdered sugar for the meringue is about 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups, which is generous by modern taste.
- Oven heat"Bake until the crust is done" is the only guidance given; the book names no temperature. In a modern oven, 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 350F until the filling no longer ripples in the centre, will answer; for the meringue, 350F for 12 to 15 minutes browns it without weeping.
- The crust is the weak pointThe three recipes that specify pastry pour a wet filling into a raw shell (Mrs. N. gives no crust direction). Blind-bake the shell at 400F with weights until dry and pale gold, then add the filling; otherwise the bottom stays raw under a custard that is already set.
- Mrs. McG.'s uncooked meringueHer instruction to froth the whites over the cold pie and stop there leaves the meringue raw; Mrs. N.'s directions likewise stop at putting the whites on top. Bake it as the first and third recipes do, or use a cooked Swiss meringue, if raw egg white is a concern in your household.
- Mrs. N.'s buttermilk and sodaA teaspoonful of soda against a cup of buttermilk plus the juice of four lemons is a great deal of acid for the alkali to meet, and the filling may foam as it goes in. Half a teaspoon is closer to modern balance, and she gives no crust direction at all -- use a single bottom crust as in the others.
- Grating the rindTake only the coloured zest; the white pith beneath it is bitter.
- Cool before the eggsThe first recipe insists the cornstarch base be cool before the yolks go in, and it matters -- yolks stirred into boiling starch scramble into threads that no amount of beating will smooth out.
- YieldRecipe one states two pies. The others give no yield, though the third and fourth both refer to "pies" in the plural.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, works exactly as this page shows: rather than settle on one authoritative method, it prints every version its correspondents sent in, initialled. The result is a snapshot of how one dish varied from kitchen to kitchen in the post-war South. Lemon pie of this type belongs to a family of English lemon puddings and cheesecakes carried into American baking, and the cornstarch-thickened version in the first recipe reflects a genuinely new ingredient for the period -- commercial cornstarch was manufactured in the United States from the 1840s and gave home cooks a cheap, reliable thickener where earlier recipes leaned on eggs and butter alone. The meringue tops, all four of them, are often explained by the fact that a pie built on yolks leaves a cook with whites to spend.