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Lemon Pie (One lemon grated one cup sugar)
One lemon grated, one cup sugar, the yolks of three eggs, small pieces butter, three table-spoons milk, two tea-spoons corn starch; beat all together and bake in a rich crust; beat the whites with three table-spoons sugar, place on the pie when done, and then brown in the oven. - Mrs. W. E. Scobey.
A one-lemon custard pie of the plainest sort: no water, no thickened cornstarch paste, just yolks, sugar and a little milk set in the oven. It works, but the nineteenth-century shorthand leaves out nearly every number a modern cook expects.
- "One lemon grated"Most likely the whole fruit put to use: the rind grated fine and the juice squeezed in, though the recipe names only the grating. A medium lemon gives about 1 tablespoon zest and 2 to 3 tablespoons juice, which is all the acid this filling gets.
- The filling is very smallThree yolks, a cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of milk make a shallow layer. The recipe names no pan size; in a modern 9-inch deep dish it will look meagre, and a smaller plate is the better match.
- "Small pieces butter"Read this as 1 to 2 tablespoons, cut up and beaten in. It is there for richness, not structure.
- CornstarchTwo teaspoons is the only thickener besides the yolks. Whisk it with the sugar before adding the liquids or it will lump; there is not enough milk to disperse it once the eggs are in.
- "A rich crust"A short, well-fatted pastry. The recipe pours the beaten filling straight into the crust and bakes the two together; part-baking the shell first will give a crisper base, but it is a modern departure from the text.
- Oven heatBake the filled pie at 350F until the centre barely jiggles, roughly 25-30 minutes. The book assumes you know this; a hotter oven curdles a yolk custard this lean.
- The meringueThree whites to 3 tablespoons sugar is a soft, old-style meringue, not the stiff sweet cap of later recipes. Spread it onto the filling while the pie is still hot and seal it to the crust edge, then brown at 350F for 12-15 minutes rather than flashing it under high heat — a brief scorch leaves the interior raw and weeping.
- YieldOne pie, six modest slices. Best eaten the day it is made; the meringue will begin to bead by the second day.
Lemon pie belongs to a family of American custard pies with roots in English lemon cheesecakes and lemon puddings, and such pies multiplied in printed cookbooks through the second half of the nineteenth century. This version represents the earlier and thriftier branch: no water-and-cornstarch base boiled on the stove, just a small rich custard of yolks and one lemon, with the leftover whites beaten up and returned to the oven so that nothing is wasted. Community cookbooks of the period often carry several such lemon pies within a few pages, each slightly different, which suggests how a household recipe traveled by neighbor rather than by book.