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Chiffon Lemon Pie Filling
3 egg yolks, well beaten 1 cup sugar 1 lemon (grated rind and juice) 3 tablespoons boiling water 3 egg whites, beaten stiff Beat egg yolks till very light, gradually add half the sugar, the grated lemon rind and juice, then the boiling water. Cook in double boiler until mixture coats a spoon. Add remaining sugar to stiffly beaten egg whites and fold into custard. Pour into baked pie shell, and serve. Makes 1 pie.
This is a two-part filling: a cooked lemon curd base and a meringue of whites that is folded in cold and never heated at all. That second half is why the pie cannot be recommended as written.
- The whites are never cookedThe three beaten whites go into the custard off the heat, and the assembled pie is poured into an already-baked shell and served. Nothing brings the whites to a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, which can be present inside intact, clean shell eggs. A modern chiffon recipe either uses pasteurised whites or cooks the whole mixture.
- The yolk base is borderline too"Cook until the mixture coats a spoon" describes roughly 170F in a double boiler, which is adequate for the yolks. But that base is then diluted and cooled by a large volume of raw meringue, so the finished filling never sits at a safe temperature.
- No gelatin, no starch, no setting agentLater chiffon fillings generally depend on softened gelatin, or on cornstarch, to hold the aerated mixture. With only three yolks, sugar, lemon and three tablespoons of water, this filling has nothing to set it and can be expected to weep and slump on standing.
- Not a meringue-topped pieDo not read this as a lemon meringue, where the sweetened whites are spread on top and browned in the oven. Here the whites are folded through the body of the filling, so there is no baking step at any point after the shell comes out.
- What the vessels mean"Double boiler" is a bowl or upper pan over simmering, not boiling, water; direct heat will scramble a yolk-and-citrus mixture very quickly. "Baked pie shell" means a crust baked in advance; the recipe gives no size, and since nothing further goes into the oven it must be baked through before filling.
- Yield"Makes 1 pie." The original gives no pan size and no number of servings, and it gives no refrigeration instruction of any kind.
- If you want this pieUse a current lemon chiffon recipe that specifies pasteurised eggs or a cooked meringue, rather than adapting this one.
Chiffon pies belong to the American 1920s and 1930s, when there was broad interest in fillings that were light, pale and aerated rather than dense and starchy. The name is usually said to be borrowed from the dress fabric, though that is the traditional explanation rather than a documented one. Folding a raw sweetened meringue into a warm curd appears in printed recipes across this period and fell out of use as egg-handling advice tightened in the later twentieth century, which is why versions from this period read as unfinished to a modern eye.