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Lemon-Cream Pies
Line some small buttered plates with a good short paste, and bake until lightly browned. Boil one pint of milk, then put with it one teacupful of powdered sugar; mix together the grated rind of half a lemon and two tablespoonfuls of flour, pour over a little of the milk gradually to form a thick paste, then mix all together and whisk it over the fire. When the flour is cooked, add the juice of half a lemon, a large lump of butter, and four well-beaten yolks of eggs, continue stirring over the fire, but be careful to remove it before the eggs curdle. Pour the cream into the plates of crusts, and serve when cold.
This is a lemon crème pâtissière poured into pre-baked tartlet shells — no second bake, no meringue. The whole dish turns on the last stage at the stove.
- The hinge: temper, then hold below a simmerThe hinge: hold below a simmer -- Once the four yolks go in, keep the pan below a simmer and stir constantly; too much heat will curdle the eggs, as the recipe itself warns. Slackening the yolks with a ladleful of the hot flour-thickened milk before they go into the pan is a sensible precaution, though the recipe does not call for it.
- Cook the flour firstThe two tablespoons of flour must boil for a good two minutes while whisking, before the yolks and butter are added, or the finished cream tastes pasty. This is what "when the flour is cooked" means.
- A teacupfulA teacup in this period is variously reckoned at 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a cup of sugar. Powdered sugar here means finely milled granulated, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch — caster sugar is the closest match.
- Small buttered platesFour-inch tartlet tins or individual pie tins. A pint of milk makes enough cream for four to six of them, depending on depth.
- Blind-baking the paste"Bake until lightly browned" means fully blind-baked, since nothing goes back into the oven. The book gives no temperatures; a moderately hot oven — about 400F — with paper and weights for around 15 minutes, then a few minutes uncovered to dry and colour the base, will do it.
- A large lump of butterRead this as 1 to 2 tablespoons. The recipe adds it along with the juice and yolks, with stirring continued over the fire, not off the heat at the end. It is there for gloss and richness, not structure.
- Zest before juiceGrate the rind from the lemon while it is whole; half a lemon gives roughly a teaspoon of zest and a tablespoon and a half of juice. The juice goes in after the starch has cooked, as written — acid added early weakens the thickening.
- Filling and coolingPour while the cream is still hot so it settles level, then cool uncovered to avoid condensation, and chill. Fill no more than a couple of hours before serving or the shells soften.
Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel whose name fronted this 1896 collection, was recording the working repertoire of a large New York hotel kitchen, and this is a hotel pastry cook's solution: one batch of lemon pastry cream, a tray of shells baked in advance, and individual portions assembled to order. The "cream" of the title is the French crème pâtissière — milk, sugar, flour and yolks cooked together — rather than dairy cream, a usage common in nineteenth-century English and American cookbooks. Lemon pies of this flour-and-yolk type are generally older than the meringue-topped version most Americans now picture. That the recipe calls for "some small plates" rather than a stated number is common in the book, which tends to give quantities by the batch rather than the portion.