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Imitation Lemon Pie Acid Pie
6 ounces of bread or cracker crumbs. 1 quart of water. 1 pound of sugar. 1 rounded teaspoonful of tartaric acid. 2 tablespoonsful of lemon extract. 5 eggs, or 10 yolks for richer color, Mix all the ingredients together cold. The imitation of lemon mixture is very close and the pie is better than the real that is sometimes made with green and bitter lemons It is not everyone that calls himself a pastry cook can turn out hotel pies artistically, and however much the casual reader who thinks of pie only as something to eat may be amused at the idea we assure him there are possibilities of taking high position among the other things of beauty on the weal thy table for the hotel pie which do not exist for the private house pie, or the baker's pie, or if they do are so remote it will take ages of domestic pie culture to bring them in sight. The experienced hotel steward knows now instantly when he has secured a fully developed hotel or fine steamboat pie maker. Your baker trained to work for the hungry pie eater rather than for the luxurious admirers of beautiful pies covers every pie with a top crust, which is the first sign, but the great sign of his standing is set up when he takes both hands and cuts off the pastry by pressing against the edge of the plate, whirling the pie round at the same time. Why should he make or wish to make fine leaf paste to press and mash in that way? But your first-class pastry cook having made his paste so that the flakes will rise and open as distinct and separate as the leaves of a rose and of a thinness more impalpable than that no matter how rapidly he may work, will roll evenly, throw it on the pie pan lightly, shake it down to place with a little jar upon the table, take it up on the fingers of the left hand and cut around with a sharp knife, not leaving the least sign of pressure, finger mark or drag or tear about it. These pies though having tall flake-piled edges are pretty sure to be almost as dry and free from grease as flaky biscuits and quite wholesome both to eat and to see. If people say that hotel pies are not so we reply that it is because the pastry art is somewhat difficult and there are few masters of it the beginners are slow to get hold of the fine touches and the hotels are full of half taught beginners. We don't know anything about the private houses, and these remarks make no invidious reflections upon the household pie. With both bottom and top crust rolled thin and powdered sugar on top it is good. But the hotel pie contemplates life from a different stand point and like all the products of high art it is somewhat aristocratic Literature is cheap and common--you can buy a rare classic for ten cents--the best thoughts of the best writers for a nickel--imitations not to be detected of the rarest gems for a dollar or two--but the ideal hotel pie is only for the few. So careful and tender is the good workman of his leaf paste that he slants the knife outwards when cutting that the paste may be wide and make a broad edge; and that broad edge he notches with a sharp knife in the places where the pie is to be divided, lest with a rude pressure somebody will crush and spoil the flakes in cutting the pie after it is baked.
Greatest country, tallest mountains, longest rivers, biggest pies.
A filling formula rather than a full recipe: the book gives proportions and tells you to mix cold, then wanders off into an essay on hotel pastry. Everything about crust and baking you supply yourself.
- The hinge: this is a custard, so bake it gentlyThe hinge: with five eggs to a quart of liquid and only the crumbs as extra thickener, this behaves like a soft custard, so bake it gently. The book gives no oven temperature or baking time whatsoever; a moderate oven (around 350F in modern terms) until the centre is just barely wobbly is a reasonable modern reading, and hard heat will curdle and weep it.
- YieldA quart of water with a pound of sugar, the crumbs and the eggs comes to something like 1½ to 1¾ quarts of filling, enough for two or three 9-inch pies. Scale to a quarter for a single pie: 1½ oz crumbs, 1 cup water, ¼ lb sugar, a scant ¼ teaspoon tartaric acid, 1½ teaspoons lemon extract, 1 large egg plus a yolk.
- Tartaric acidSold with wine and cheesemaking supplies, and food grade at any homebrew shop. A rounded teaspoon in a quart gives a distinctly sour filling, though far short of the acidity of straight lemon juice; citric acid substitutes at roughly the same weight and is usually described as tasting a little less hard.
- Bread or cracker crumbsDry, fine, unseasoned crumbs, not fresh soft bread and certainly not seasoned dry breadcrumbs from a can. The book specifies neither; plain soda crackers ground fine are a plausible period choice. Let the mixture stand a while before filling so the crumbs swell and do not float.
- Lemon extractTwo tablespoons is a large dose by modern standards, and it has a quart of liquid to flavour. Period extracts varied a great deal in strength, so taste before filling; with a strong commercial extract, start at half and add. A little grated zest does more for the aroma than extra extract.
- The ten-yolk optionSubstituting ten yolks for five whole eggs gives the deeper colour the book promises and a richer, denser set. It also leaves you ten whites to use up.
- CrustThe essay's scorn for the baker who "covers every pie with a top crust" suggests a single bottom crust of flaky leaf paste here, though the book never says so and gives no pastry instruction. A wet filling in a raw shell will soak through, so blind baking the shell and cooling it before pouring is a modern safeguard.
Mock lemon pies were a standing item in nineteenth-century American baking, alongside vinegar pie and the various "mock" mince and apple fillings: a way of getting a bright acid note out of the storeroom when the fruit was expensive, out of season, or, as the author complains, green and bitter by the time it reached the kitchen. Tartaric acid, a by-product of winemaking, was a cheap grocery staple then and turns up in baking powders and lemonade powders of the same period. The long digression on hotel pastry that follows the formula is the real point of the page: it belongs to the era when large hotels and steamboats employed specialist pastry cooks and a trade press argued about their standing, and its test of a good workman, that he cuts the overhang with a knife rather than crushing it against the rim of the pan, is still a fair one.