Lemon Pie IV
¼ cup lemon juice Grated rind ½ lemon 2 tablespoons water Beat eggs slightly, add sugar, lemon juice, grated rind, and water. Bake in one crust in a moderate oven. Cool slightly, cover with Meringue II, then return to oven and bake meringue. 1 cup sugar Lemon Pie V 1 cup milk 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons lemon juice Yolks 2 eggs 1 tablespoon melted butter Whites 2 eggs Few grains salt Mix sugar and flour, add lemon juice, egg yolks slightly beaten, milk, butter, whites of eggs beaten stiff, and salt. Bake in one crust, and cover with meringue or not, as desired.
Two lemon pies of the same family: eggs, sugar and lemon poured raw into a pastry shell and set in the oven, the meringue added at the end. Lemon Pie V is the fuller of the two, a flour-thickened lemon custard.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is conventionally read today as somewhere around 350F, though the book itself gives no figures. A lemon custard baked much hotter will curdle and weep; 325-350F is the working range, and the filling is done when the centre still trembles slightly.
- The measure of lemon juiceThe first pie's juice quantity is printed as "14 cup", plainly a damaged fraction (most likely a quarter cup); the figure as it stands cannot be taken literally.
- One crust means unbaked"Bake in one crust" means a single bottom shell, filled raw and baked with the pie. Because the filling is wet, a chilled pastry shell and a preheated baking sheet under the pan help keep the base from going soft.
- Meringue IIA cross-reference to the book's own meringue recipe, which is not printed on this page. Meringue goes onto warm, not hot, filling, spread right to the pastry edge so it does not shrink back, and browns in roughly 12-15 minutes at a moderate heat.
- Flour, not cornstarchLemon Pie V thickens with three tablespoons of flour. It sets softer and looks slightly cloudier than a modern cornstarch filling, which is the character of the dish rather than a fault.
- Mixing order mattersThe sugar and flour are combined dry before any liquid goes in. Skip that and the flour lumps, and the lumps will not cook out in a batter that is never brought to the boil on the stove.
- Beaten whites in the fillingIn Pie V the stiff whites are folded into the raw filling, which puffs and then settles as it bakes, giving a light top layer under any added meringue. It also means there are no whites left over, so the "or not, as desired" clause is genuine.
- YieldNo pan size or yield is given; a filling of this quantity suits a standard pie plate and would serve six to eight. Both cut best once thoroughly cooled; refrigeration firms the custard but softens the pastry.
Lemon pie earned its numbered variations in American cookbooks because there are several distinct ways to get the same result: a stirred cornstarch filling cooked on the range, a plain baked custard of eggs and juice, and a flour-thickened batter lightened with beaten whites, as here. Printing several versions of a popular pie side by side is characteristic of the cooking-school books, and would have let a reader compare how one thickener or one proportion of egg behaved against another. Cheaper granulated sugar and better rail and steamer distribution of citrus in the later nineteenth century made lemon pie easier to make outside the winter shipping season.