Home › Pastry › Lemon Sponge Pie
Lemon Sponge Pie
1 cup milk 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 tbsp. flour 1 tbsp. butter pinch of salt Cream butter and sugar, add flour, separate whites and yolks of eggs, mixing yolks with sugar and butter, add grated rind of lemon and juice, and milk lastly stirring in beaten whites of eggs. Pour into unbaked crust and bake.
— Mrs. E. Knight
— Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs
— Mrs. Joseph Legg
— Mrs. Ada F. Nickerson
A community-cookbook version of the pie that separates in the oven into a custard layer beneath a light sponge top. The original gives no oven temperature, time, or lemon quantity, so a few decisions have to be made for it.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe recipe says "stirring in beaten whites," but the sponge layer depends on those whites holding air. Beat them to soft peaks and fold them in gently at the very end; the thin batter will look curdled and separated, which is correct.
- Lemon quantityNo number is given. One large lemon — rind and juice, roughly 3 tablespoons of juice — suits this quantity of milk and sugar. More than that risks overwhelming 1 cup of milk, and the extra acid may curdle it.
- Oven temperatureBake at 425F for the first 10-15 minutes to set the crust, then reduce to 325-350F for another 25-30 minutes. The pie is done when the top is golden and springs back and the center is just set with a slight wobble.
- Blind bake or notPoured into an unbaked shell, this very wet batter tends to leave the bottom crust pale and soft. A partially blind-baked shell, or a hot start on a preheated baking sheet, gives a better base.
- Flour as the thickenerTwo tablespoons of flour is the only starch in the filling, working alongside the eggs, so measure it level and whisk it smoothly into the creamed butter and sugar. Lumps will not dissolve later in the milk.
- Butter and sugar won't cream properlyOne tablespoon of butter to a cup of sugar will never go fluffy — it makes a damp sand. That is expected; the butter is here for flavor and richness, not leavening.
- YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pie, six modest slices. It is best the day it is baked; refrigerate leftovers, since it is an egg-and-milk custard.
- Four names, one recipeThe four attributions most likely mean four contributors sent in the same formula, and the editors printed it once with all their names. Nothing needs to be multiplied.
Lemon sponge pie belongs to a family of American pies in which a thin milk-and-egg batter divides in the oven into custard below and a cake-like layer above, the beaten whites rising through the loose batter as the custard sets beneath them. Recipes of this kind circulated widely in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household cookery. Its appearance here under four names is characteristic of church and society fundraising cookbooks, compiled from what contributors' own households made; duplicated submissions were sometimes printed anyway, with every contributor's name attached. The pantry list also helps explain its popularity: milk, sugar, two eggs, a spoonful each of flour and butter, and a single lemon put a dessert on the table without recourse to fruit out of season.