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Lemon Custard Pie
To make the filling use three eggs; one large or two small lemons; one and one-half cups of sugar; one-half cup of water; one and one-half cups of milk; one tablespoon of melted butter. Separate the yolks of the eggs from the whites, rub the sugar and yolks to a cream, and add the water and then the milk. Stir all well together, then put in the melted butter; and when everything is ready to put the filling in the crust, add the lemon juice and the grated rind. When added in this way the acid will not curdle the milk. Bake for three-fourths of an hour. Use puff paste. Whip the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add a tablespoon of sugar, spread the mixture on top of the pies when baked, return them to the oven and brown the whites lightly. To be eaten cold.
A thin, pourable lemon custard rather than a cornstarch-thickened lemon meringue — closer to a chess or transparent pie in texture. Two details carry the whole recipe: when the lemon goes in, and how gently the pie bakes.
- Add the lemon last, and mean itThe instruction to hold back the juice and rind until the moment of filling is the hinge of the recipe. Acid stirred into milk and left to stand will curdle it, and the baked custard sets grainy. Mix the juice and grated zest in, pour immediately, and get the pie into the oven.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A milk-and-egg custard wants 325-350F; three-quarters of an hour at that range is about right for a filling this shallow. Above 375F the eggs tighten and weep.
- Judging donenessThe custard is set when the outer two inches are firm and the center still trembles as a single mass; it finishes setting as it cools. An instant-read thermometer in the center should show 170-175F. Overbaking is one common cause of the watery layer under the meringue.
- Puff pastePeriod puff paste for pies was a rough, many-folded butter paste. Store-bought puff pastry works but slumps under a liquid filling — line the pan, chill it hard, and blind bake with weights until the base is dry before pouring in the custard. A standard all-butter shortcrust is the easier substitution.
- Proportions and panThree eggs, two cups of liquid and a cup and a half of sugar make a well-filled 9-inch shell serving six to eight; note that the recipe's own wording ("on top of the pies") suggests it may have been meant to fill more than one. The sugar is generous by current taste and can be reduced, though sugar does affect the temperature at which the custard sets.
- LemonsLemon size varies, then as now. Reckon on about 1/4 cup of juice and the zest of one fruit, and grate only the colored outer layer — the white pith under it turns bitter in a custard.
- The meringueOne tablespoon of sugar to three whites is very lean and will bead and slide. Two tablespoons per white gives a meringue that holds. Spread it over the still-warm filling and seal it to the crust edge all around, then brown 8-10 minutes at 350F.
- Serving"To be eaten cold" is instruction, not preference: the custard is not fully set warm. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate, and eat within a day or two before the meringue starts to sweat.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator — one of many turn-of-the-century publishers who found that a household manual sold to the same readers as sewing patterns. This pie sits in the older family of "transparent" and lemon custard pies, thickened by eggs rather than by the cornstarch that defines the lemon meringue pie of later American cookbooks; the meringue lid, generally traced to European whipped-white toppings adopted by nineteenth-century pastry cooks, was by 1911 a standard way to use up whites left over from a yolk-rich filling. The careful note that acid added at the last moment will not curdle the milk is the kind of practical chemistry these books did well: a cook who understood it could keep making custard pies with lemons that varied in size and sharpness from one crate to the next.