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Lemon Pie with Cornstarch & Juice
1 C sugar. 1 C boiling water 1 lemon 1½ T cornstarch 2 eggs Pinch of salt Beat egg yolks, add sugar, juice of lemon and boiling water. Put into double boiler and when hot add cornstarch moistened with a little cold water, cook until thick. Pour into a baked chell, cover with meringue made from whites of eggs. Brown in oven.
A cornstarch-and-egg lemon filling of the plainest sort, typical of a church cookbook where the compiler assumed the cook already knew the proportions. One key quantity is missing entirely.
- The sugar is not measuredThe ingredient list gives no amount, though the method calls for sugar in the yolks. For a single-lemon, one-cup-of-water filling, contemporary recipes of the same type use roughly ¾ to 1 cup granulated sugar. Treat this as an omission by the original compiler rather than a conversion problem.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon. So: 1 cup boiling water, 1½ tablespoons cornstarch. "Chell" is a typesetting error for shell.
- The hinge: temper the yolksPouring a cup of boiling water into beaten yolks will curdle them if done all at once. Add it in a thin stream while whisking, then transfer to the double boiler. The double boiler is not optional here — direct heat scrambles this filling.
- Cornstarch needs a real boil to set"Cook until thick" undersells it. Cornstarch reaches full thickening power only near the boil, and a filling pulled off at merely hot will slump when sliced. Over a double boiler expect 8–12 minutes of steady stirring after the slurry goes in, until the mixture coats a spoon heavily.
- LemonOne lemon yields about 3 tablespoons juice. Add the grated zest with the sugar if you want more perfume; add the juice off the heat or late, as prolonged cooking dulls it.
- Meringue proportionsTwo whites want about 4 tablespoons sugar, beaten in a spoonful at a time to stiff, glossy peaks. Spread it over the filling while the filling is still hot and seal it right to the crust edge all the way round — this helps keep the meringue from weeping and shrinking away.
- "Brown in oven"No temperature is given. In modern terms, something like 350°F for 12–15 minutes will set the meringue evenly, while a hotter oven around 400°F for 8–10 minutes gives more colour and a softer interior. Cool away from drafts, then chill before cutting.
- YieldEnough for an 8-inch baked shell, thinly for a 9-inch; six to eight servings.
Cornstarch-thickened lemon pie became a fixture of American home baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, once packaged cornstarch was cheap and widely sold — it let a cook stretch two eggs and one lemon into a full pie, where an older lemon custard or lemon cheese would have wanted a good many more eggs and a quantity of butter.