Lemon Pie
3/4 cup boiling water 3/4 cup sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch or flour 2 egg yolks 3 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon butter Mix cornstarch and sugar, add boiling water, stirring constantly. Cook 2 minutes, add butter, egg yolks and rind and juice of 1 lemon. Line a plate with Pie Paste No. 2. Put a rim 1½ inch wide around rim; flute with the fingers first dipped in flour. Turn in edge, or cut pastry larger than plate and build up a mixture which has been cooled and bake until pastry is done. Cook slightly and cover with a meringue, then return to oven and bake meringue.
Meringue Beat whites of 2 eggs until stiff, add gradually 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and continue beating; then add 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice or 1/4 teaspoon vanilla. 4 eggs 2 heaping tablespoons flour
The text as printed is a compositor's wreck: the ingredient list has been split, part of it stranded at the end, and the amounts of cornstarch, sugar and boiling water never appear at all. The method is sound and recoverable, but you will be supplying numbers the page does not give.
- Missing quantitiesNo amount is given for the cornstarch, sugar or boiling water, and the trailing "4 eggs / 2 heaping tablespoons flour" appears to be stray type, most likely from a neighbouring formula on the same page: it does not fit this recipe, which already calls for 2 yolks and cornstarch. A filling of this type generally runs to about a cup of sugar, three to four tablespoons of thickener and a cup and a half of boiling water for a nine-inch pie, but that is inference, not what the book says.
- Cornstarch needs longer than two minutesCornstarch needs a real boil -- Two minutes is only enough if the mixture has genuinely come to the boil; held below boiling it will stay thin and taste raw. Bring it to a full boil and hold it there, stirring, until it turns glossy and thickly coats the spoon.
- Add the yolks off the heatThe yolks go in after the starch has cooked. Temper them with a ladle of the hot mixture first, then return everything to the pan and give it a short spell of gentle heat to set them.
- Lemon juice lastThe acid is stirred in at the end for the same reason. Prolonged boiling with lemon juice breaks down cornstarch and gives a filling that weeps in the shell.
- Pie Paste No. 2A cross-reference to another entry in the same book, not an ingredient you buy. Any plain short pastry for a single crust will serve.
- Bake the shell blindBaking the shell -- The line is mangled, but "bake until pastry is done" appears to follow the filling of the shell rather than precede it, so the pie is most likely baked with the cooled filling in place. The book gives no oven temperature; if you prefer to bake the shell empty instead, dock or weight it so it does not lift.
- The meringueTwo whites and two tablespoons of sugar is a thin meringue by modern standards, closer to a glaze than a pillow. Spread it so it touches the pastry all the way round, which is what keeps it from shrinking back, and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until the peaks colour.
- Cooling and yield"Cook slightly" in the fifth line is a misprint for cool slightly. The book says only "a plate" and gives no yield; on a nine-inch plate this would make one pie of six to eight servings. Let it sit several hours before cutting or the filling will run.
Lemon pie of this kind — a cornstarch-thickened, yolk-enriched custard under a whipped-white meringue — became a fixture of American home baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, once cheap refined cornstarch and reliable year-round lemons made it possible in an ordinary kitchen. Cornstarch was manufactured commercially in the United States from the 1840s onward and was promoted hard for puddings and pie fillings, since it gave a firm slice without the eggs and long stovetop attention a true custard demands. Books like this one, aimed at cooks working from a shared household repertoire, print the recipe in shorthand and lean on cross-references such as "Pie Paste No. 2" — an economy that worked when the reader had the whole book in front of her, and that has left this particular page half-legible now that it stands alone.