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Lemon Pie (V)
Mrs. Joseph Saulter.
One lemon, one cup of sugar, half a cup water, two eggs, one teaspoonful butter; line your pie plate with a nice crust; pour in the above; bake in a quick oven.
A bare-bones lemon custard baked in a single crust, of the kind that filled a page or two of every 1870s subscription cookbook. It works, but the instructions assume knowledge the compiler did not bother to write down.
- The hinge: don't bake it at full heat throughoutA "quick oven" is generally reckoned at around 400-425F, which is right for setting the pastry but will curdle an egg filling into a weeping, grainy mess. Start hot for about 10 minutes, drop to 325-350F, and bake until the centre is just barely set and still wobbles slightly, roughly 25-30 minutes more.
- "One lemon" means all of itMost printed lemon pie recipes of the period specify the grated zest and the juice, with seeds and white pith discarded; a smaller number call for the whole lemon chopped in, which gives a more bitter, stringier filling. Use the zest and juice of one large lemon.
- There is no thickenerTwo eggs, a cup of sugar and half a cup of water set only softly. Expect a loose lemon custard rather than the stiff cornstarch filling of a modern lemon pie. If you want it sliceable, a level tablespoon of flour or cornstarch whisked into the sugar will do it.
- Butter and sugarMelt the teaspoon of butter and beat it in with the eggs so it does not float and scorch. A full cup of sugar against one lemon reads sweet to modern palates; three-quarters of a cup is closer to current expectations.
- Pie sizeThis quantity suits a shallow 8-inch plate, not a deep 9-inch dish. It makes six modest slices.
- Blind bake if you canA wet filling poured into raw pastry in a hot oven often yields a soggy base. Partly baking the shell for 12 minutes with weights, then filling it, solves the problem the original simply lived with.
- No top crust, no meringueThe recipe gives neither, so the surface will brown and freckle. Cool fully before cutting; a warm eggy filling has not finished setting.
The Home Cook Book was assembled in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named housekeepers and sold in aid of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, which is why this page carries Mrs. Joseph Saulter's name rather than an author's. Books of that kind printed every version a committee received, which is how one volume ends up with a Lemon Pie (V) and no attempt to reconcile it with the four before it. Lemon pies spread widely through North American home baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, as imported citrus became a more regular grocery item and refined sugar fell in price. The section heading, "Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen," belongs to one of the comic domestic sketches these charity books used to break up long runs of recipes.