No. 3202

Lemon Custard Pie, Venetian Style

Tarte de Venise a la Creme au Citron

Line a deep tin pie plate with foundation paste (No. 135), operating the same as for cocoanut pie, and let it set. Put three whole eggs and three separate yolks into a vessel, stir in three ounces of powdered sugar and an ounce of lemon sugar; dilute with a pint of milk and strain the whole through a fine strainer. Fill the pie crust three-quarters full with this, push carefully into the oven and finish filling with a dipper. Cook from forty to fifty minutes.

← No. 3201 Cream Pie Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3203 Pumpkin Pie →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain baked custard pie flavored with lemon zest, from Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. The whole recipe hinges on gentle heat: the filling is a milk-and-egg custard and will curdle or weep if driven too hard.

Oven temperatureRanhofer names no heat. A milk custard of this ratio wants 325-350F for the 40-50 minutes given. Anything hotter sets the edges into a sponge before the center thickens.
Lemon sugarNot a product you can buy. Rub granulated or lump sugar hard against the zest of a lemon until it is yellow and fragrant, then weigh out an ounce; the oil in the zest is the whole flavoring. One large lemon's zest worked into sugar is about right.
Foundation pasteNo. 135 is Ranhofer's basic lining pastry (pate a foncer), a short unsweetened dough; its text is not reproduced here. Any all-butter pie dough works. "Let it set" appears to mean resting the lined shell until the pastry is firm, which limits shrinkage.
Weights, not cupsThree ounces of powdered sugar is a scant half cup by volume; the ounce of lemon sugar is about two tablespoons. A pint means 16 fluid ounces of milk. Weigh the sugar if you can, since powdered sugar packs unevenly.
Why you fill it in the ovenThe instruction to fill three-quarters full, slide the pie in, then top it off with a dipper is not fussiness. A brimful custard pie sloshes onto the oven floor on the way in. Fill it on the rack.
DonenessIgnore the clock past about 35 minutes and watch the pie. It is done when the outer two inches are set and a circle in the center still trembles as a unit; the residual heat finishes it. An instant-read thermometer at the center should show 170-175F. Baked to firm all the way across, it will crack and leak whey as it cools.
Blind bakingRanhofer does not prebake, and a wet custard poured into raw pastry tends to soak the base. A partial blind bake — lined and weighted at 400F until dry, then cooled — gives a better crust, though it departs from the text.
Yield and servingThe recipe gives no diameter; the quantities suit one deep pie plate of roughly 9 inches, six to eight portions. It belongs with the cold entremets: cool it completely, then serve at room temperature or lightly chilled, unadorned.

A Little History

This comes from The Epicurean (1894), Charles Ranhofer's enormous record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where a great many dishes carry French titles whatever their actual ancestry. "Tarte de Venise" looks more like a kitchen label than a documented Venetian original, though the book does not explain the name. What sets this one apart from the cream pie immediately before it and the pumpkin pie after is the lemon sugar: rubbing sugar against citrus rind to capture the oil was a common nineteenth-century way of getting lemon flavor, and it still works well. The listing of this baked pie among cold entremets suggests that a custard tart was a dessert to be finished, cooled and held, rather than served warm from the oven.