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Lemon Cream Pie
1 quart of milk. 8 ounces of sugar. 4 ounces of flour. 1 ounce of butter. 8 yolks of eggs. 1 lemon, juice and rind, or lemon extract. Pinch of salt. Make as directed in preceding receipt, without the chocolate
This is a professional baker's variation formula: the preceding recipe was a chocolate cream filling, and here the chocolate is dropped and lemon put in its place. What you are making is a flour-thickened pastry cream for a pre-baked shell.
- The weights in cupsA quart of milk is 4 cups; 8 oz sugar is about 1 cup; 4 oz flour is a scant cup of all-purpose (a cup weighs roughly 4 1/4 oz); 1 oz butter is 2 tablespoons. Weigh the flour if you can, since an overpacked cup will make the filling pasty.
- The method the recipe assumesScald the milk, whisk the sugar, flour, salt and yolks to a smooth paste, temper in the hot milk, then return everything to the pan and cook, stirring, until it thickens. Beat in the butter off the heat.
- It must actually boilUnlike a cornstarch pudding, a flour-based cream needs to reach a full bubble and hold there a minute or two, stirring constantly, or it will taste of raw flour and may thin out later. The starch protects the yolks from scrambling at that temperature.
- Lemon goes in lastInfuse the grated rind in the hot milk for flavour, but add the juice only after the cream is cooked and off the heat. Acid added early weakens the starch and the filling will slacken as it cools.
- Or extract, as offeredThe recipe's alternative of lemon extract may reflect a kitchen working at volume. Use about a teaspoon, and expect a flatter, more perfumed flavour with none of the acidity.
- Cooling and settingPress plastic wrap directly on the surface to prevent a skin, chill thoroughly, then fill a fully blind-baked shell. Filling a raw or barely baked crust with this much wet cream guarantees a soggy bottom.
- YieldA quart of milk yields enough filling for two 9-inch pies, not one. Halve the formula for a single pie, or use the remainder as a cake or eclair filling.
- The eight leftover whitesOne obvious use is a meringue top: the whites from this batch will cover both pies generously.
Cookbooks of this kind are built out of base formulas and variations rather than standalone recipes — a single boiled cream is set down once and then re-flavoured with chocolate, lemon, vanilla or coffee, which is why this entry is three lines long and refers you upward. The thickener may be a tell: American home recipes for lemon meringue pie tended toward cornstarch through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while flour remained common in trade work, being cheaper and more forgiving of long cooking on a busy range. "Cream pie" here means the custard, not whipped cream; the family includes coconut, banana and chocolate cream pies, all of them the same pot of pastry cream in a baked shell, often finished with meringue.