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Lemon Butter Pie or Tart. Richest
1 pound of sugar. 5 lemons. 4 ounces of butter. 8 yolks of eggs. 1 whole egg. Make a boiling lemon syrup of the sugar, grated rinds and juice of the lemons--no water needed--and throw in the butter. When that is melted stir in the eggs. Let simmer on the range about 10 minutes.
Make the pies small, the paste rolled very thin, and bake dry.
This is lemon curd, cooked whole rather than in a double boiler, then baked in thin pastry. The whole point of the formula is richness: no water, no cornstarch, no milk, nothing but sugar, lemon, butter and yolks.
- The hinge: heat control once the eggs go inThe sugar and lemon juice can be brought to a genuine boil, but once the yolks are stirred in the mixture should be held below a hard boil or it may curdle. Whisk the hot syrup into the beaten eggs in a thin stream first, return it to low heat, and stir constantly; "simmer on the range" probably indicates the cooler part of a coal-range top rather than a rolling bubble.
- Weights, not cups1 pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups; 4 ounces of butter is one stick. Five lemons give roughly ¾ to 1 cup of juice depending on size, so measure the juice rather than counting fruit.
- Grated rindTake only the yellow zest; the white pith turns the filling bitter and the recipe relies entirely on lemon for flavour. Rub the zest into the sugar before heating to draw out the oils.
- Cooking timeTen minutes at a bare simmer with constant stirring will thicken it to a heavy coating consistency. Judge by texture, not the clock: when a spoon drawn through leaves a clear track, stop, and strain the curd to catch any threads of set egg.
- "Bake dry"This most likely means bake until the pastry is fully crisp and the filling has set with no wet shimmer, rather than pulling the tarts while the shells are still pale. The book gives no temperature; since the filling is already cooked, a fairly hot oven suits thin paste, and small tins bake through before the curd colours.
- Small pies, thin pasteThe instruction is probably structural. This filling is soft and very rich, and a large deep shell may slump; individual tartlet tins or a shallow pan give the pastry a better chance to support it and keep the ratio of crust to curd sensible.
- YieldThe batch makes roughly 3 to 3½ cups of curd, enough for two 9-inch shallow tarts or a couple of dozen small tartlets.
- StorageButter-and-yolk curd is perishable. Keep the finished tarts refrigerated and eat within two or three days; the leftover filling keeps about a week in a covered jar in the fridge.
Lemon butter is one American name for what English cooks called lemon curd or lemon cheese: a preserve-like mixture of citrus, sugar, butter and yolks cooked until thick, recorded in household use by the nineteenth century. What marks this version as a professional one is the economy of it -- no water, no thickener, a stated weight of sugar, and eight yolks to a single whole egg, which suits a bakeshop with yolks left over from the meringues and icings made elsewhere in the day's work. The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of late-1800s trade manuals written for hotel, restaurant and steamboat kitchens rather than for home cooks, which is why the instructions assume a range with hot and cool zones, a known pastry, and a baker who can tell by eye when a curd has come to the right body. The label "Richest" suggests a graded series: cheaper lemon fillings of the period were commonly stretched with water, flour or cornstarch and far fewer yolks.