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Lemon Pie. Southern
2 pounds of sugar. 1 pint of water. 9 lemons. 2 ounces of butter. 12 eggs. Cut 3 of the lemons in thin slices and keep them to strew in the pies when filled. Grate the others into the sugar, squeeze in the juice, add water, make the mixture hot to draw the lemon flavor, then mix in the eggs well beaten. Let the lemon slices float in the pies; bake, and sift powdered sugar over when done.
This is a baked lemon custard set with whole eggs alone — no cornstarch, no meringue. The quantities are trade quantities, so scale before you start.
- YieldThe filling comes to roughly two quarts, enough for about three 9-inch pies. Divide everything by four for a single pie: 8 oz sugar (a generous cup), 1/2 cup water, 2 to 3 lemons, 1/2 oz butter, 3 eggs.
- Weights, not cupsTwo pounds of sugar is about 4 1/2 cups; a pint of water is 2 cups. Bakery books of this period assume a scale, and the sugar-to-egg ratio is what sets the custard, so weigh it if you can.
- The hinge: temper the eggsThe sugar-lemon-water mixture is heated only to draw out the zest oils, then the beaten eggs go in. Let it cool to warm, or pour it slowly into the eggs while whisking. Add the eggs to a near-boiling syrup and you get sweet scrambled egg rather than custard.
- ButterTwo ounces is half a stick. The original lists it among the ingredients but never says when it goes in; stirring it into the hot lemon syrup so it melts before the eggs are added is the obvious solution.
- The crustThe original assumes a shell is already in the pan. Partially blind-bake it — 400F for about 15 minutes with weights — or the wet custard will soak the bottom.
- OvenBake at 325 to 350F, 35 to 45 minutes, until the filling is set at the edge and only faintly wobbles at the centre. A hot oven will curdle it and weep.
- The floating lemon slicesCut them paper-thin and cut away the outer skin if the pith is thick, or they turn bitter and leathery on top. They will candy slightly in the sugary custard, which is the point.
- Lemons then and nowLemon size varies, so judge by juice rather than by count. Figure roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of juice and the zest of six lemons for the full batch (the other three are sliced), and taste before baking.
- FinishingSift powdered sugar over the pies while warm, not hot — on a hot surface it dissolves into a damp film.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of trade manuals Jessup Whitehead produced for American hotel and restaurant kitchens in the 1880s and 1890s, which is why the recipe opens with two pounds of sugar and a dozen eggs rather than a pie's worth of anything: these are batch formulas for a working pastry bench, and the reader is expected to know how to line a pan. The "Southern" tag marks it as a regional style rather than an attribution — a plain baked lemon custard with slices of the fruit set floating in it, kin to the transparent pies and chess pies of the same kitchens, and notably without the meringue that came to dominate lemon pie in the twentieth century. Lemon pies of this type are generally traced to the older English lemon puddings and cheesecakes, thickened with nothing but egg; the cornstarch-bound, high-piled meringue version spread later, alongside commercial cornstarch and reliable ovens.