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Lemon Pie (VII)
Mrs. Carson.
One lemon, juice and rind grated, one cup of sugar yolks of two eggs, one cup of water, one heaped tablespoonful of corn starch; put all in a small tin pail, stand the pail in a pot of boiling water, and boil thick ; make a nice puff paste, line the plate and cook the paste alone; when done a very light brown pour in your mixture; put on the top the whites of the eggs beaten stiff with sugar.
A small, clean lemon filling cooked in a double boiler and poured into a pre-baked shell. The one thing the original leaves out is what to do with the meringue once it is on the pie.
- Brown the meringueThe recipe stops at spreading the beaten whites, but they are not meant to be eaten raw and soft. Spread the meringue so it seals to the crust edge all round and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until set and lightly coloured.
- The tin pail is a double boiler"A small tin pail" standing in a pot of boiling water is exactly the arrangement of a modern double boiler or a metal bowl over simmering water. "Boil thick" means cook until the starch clears and the mixture coats a spoon heavily; it will not reach a rolling boil over water.
- Heaped tablespoonful of cornstarchRead this as about 1 1/2 level tablespoons. Slake it in a little of the cold water first, or it will lump the moment it meets heat.
- Add the yolks last, off the heatThe instruction to put all in the pail together works only if you keep stirring constantly. Safer to thicken sugar, water and starch first, then temper in the yolks and cook two minutes more.
- Puff paste, and blind bakingNineteenth-century puff paste recipes varied; modern all-butter pie pastry or bought puff both work here. Line the plate, dock it, weight it with beans or pie weights, and bake at around 400F until a very light brown, roughly 20 minutes.
- RindGrate only the yellow zest. Any white pith carried in with it turns the filling bitter, and the filling is small enough that a little goes a long way.
- YieldOne lemon and a cup of water make a shallow filling. It suits an 8-inch pie plate; in a 9-inch deep dish it will look thin. Serves six, and it is best eaten the day it is made, as the meringue weeps by the second day.
Lemon pie with a cooked starch filling and a meringue cap belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century, when cornstarch became widely available in North America and gave home cooks an alternative thickener to flour. That this is "Lemon Pie (VII)" reflects the character of the book: The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was a community compilation, each receipt credited to the woman who contributed it, so the same dish recurs several times in several different hands. Mrs. Carson's version is a frugal one, stretching a single lemon with water and starch. A tin pail set in a pot of boiling water was one common way to improvise a double boiler in a household that owned no purpose-made one.