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Lemon Filling
2 tablespoons corn- 1 1/4 cups warm water Juice of one lemon 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter Small amount of rind 3 eggs Mix cornstarch and sugar together. Add it and the lemon juice to the beaten egg yolks. Pour the water on this mixture. Place in double boiler and stir and cook until thickened. Add the butter. Pour into baked shell. Cover with meringue and set in slow oven 300° F. to brown.
A standard lemon meringue filling cooked in a double boiler, with the meringue browned gently rather than blasted. The ingredient list as printed omits the quantities for the cornstarch and the water called for in the method, so you will need to supply them from ordinary practice.
- The missing quantitiesFor one cup of sugar and the juice of one lemon, a filling of this type normally uses 3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch and about 1 1/2 cups water. The printed list gives neither, so treat those figures as reconstruction rather than the book's own instruction.
- Slow oven300F. That is low for meringue and it will take a good while, perhaps 15 to 30 minutes, to colour, which is the point: a long dry bake sets the whites through and helps against weeping.
- Egg splitThree eggs go in, but only two whites come back out for the meringue. The third white is left over; the yolk-heavy filling is what gives it body and colour.
- Dry mix firstRubbing the cornstarch into the sugar before any liquid touches it is the whole trick against lumps. Do not skip to the juice.
- Add the water hotAdd the water -- "Pour the water on this mixture" does not say what temperature; hot water poured in a stream while stirring is the usual reading, but the book does not specify it, and cold water will simply take longer to come up in the double boiler.
- Cooking to thicknessOver simmering water this takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes of steady stirring and will thicken fairly suddenly near the end. Cook it a little past the point where it coats the spoon to take off the raw starch taste.
- Butter last, off heatButter last -- The butter goes in after the filling has thickened, as the recipe directs; the book does not say whether the pan comes off the heat first.
- Rind"Small amount of rind" means finely grated zest, roughly half a teaspoon. Take none of the white pith.
- YieldFills one 8- or 9-inch baked shell, serving six to eight. Seal the meringue right to the crust edge or it will shrink away as it cools.
Lemon meringue pie in this form depends on two nineteenth-century arrivals in the domestic kitchen: cheap refined cornstarch, which came into household use as a pudding and pie thickener from the middle of the century, and more reliable year-round citrus moved north by rail. Before cornstarch, lemon pies were thickened with flour, breadcrumbs or simply with a great many eggs, and they were correspondingly heavier. The double-boiler method suits a custard that would scorch over direct heat, and the slow oven for the meringue reflects the same instinct: browning by patience rather than by fierce top heat, which is still the more forgiving approach.