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Lemon Pie (VI)
Mrs. G. Wyllie.
Half a cup of butter, two cups of sugar, two cups of sweet milk, yolks of six eggs, one tablespoon of flour, one good lemon; use whites for frosting.
This is a filling only — the contributor assumed you already had pastry rolled out and a hot oven going. It is a lemon custard pie rather than the cornstarch-set lemon meringue most people picture.
- The hinge: thickeningOne tablespoon of flour for two cups of milk and six yolks is almost no starch — the set comes from the eggs. That means gentle heat and no boiling once the eggs go in, or it will curdle rather than thicken.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh, unsoured whole milk, specified because many recipes of the period called for sour milk or buttermilk. Whole milk is the right substitute; skim will give a thin, weepy custard.
- One good lemonMost likely the juice, and probably the grated rind as well, of one large lemon; period recipes of this type often use both. Modern supermarket lemons are often small, so use two if yours yield less than about three tablespoons of juice.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, and the recipe says nothing about the shell. A custard filling of this kind is usually baked in a moderate oven, around 350F, until the centre is just set with a slight wobble; anything hotter risks the eggs puffing and then sinking.
- FrostingHere this almost certainly means meringue: the six whites beaten stiff with sugar (no ratio is given; modern practice is roughly one to two tablespoons of sugar per white), spread over the baked filling and returned to the oven to colour.
- YieldSix yolks and two cups each of sugar and milk make far more than one nine-inch pie. Expect enough for two pies, or halve the whole thing.
- SugarTwo cups is heavy by current taste even against a whole lemon. Reducing to one and a half will not affect the set, since the eggs do the work.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, first published in the 1870s) was compiled from recipes contributed by local women, most of them signed, and several versions of the same dish are printed one after another rather than the editors choosing between them -- which is why this is Lemon Pie VI. Mrs. Wyllie's version belongs to the older milk-and-yolk custard family of lemon pie, closer to a lemon-flavoured baked custard than to the cornstarch-thickened lemon meringue that later became the American standard once boxed cornstarch and more controllable ovens were widespread. The instruction to use the whites for frosting reflects a thrift found throughout the book: a recipe calling for six yolks is expected to account for the six whites somewhere.