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Lemon Pie with Raisins
Three good-sized lemons, roll until soft. Put the juice in a dish, picking out all seeds, chop the peel very fine. Seed and chop a large cupful of raisins; mix all together, with one and one-half cupfuls light brown sugar; stir well, add a little flour and water. Bake with two crusts.
A double-crust pie built on whole lemons rather than a cooked custard, with raisins standing in for the meat and suet of mincemeat. The original assumes you know your own oven and your own pie plate, so a few numbers are worth filling in.
- The hinge: soften the peel firstChopped lemon peel benefits from time in the sugar and juice to lose its harshness. The recipe does not call for it, but letting the mixed filling stand an hour, or overnight in the refrigerator, before it goes into the shell will help; peel chopped and baked immediately can stay tough and bitter.
- How much peelThree good-sized lemons' worth of whole peel, pith included, is aggressive by modern palates. Either pare away the thick white pith and use only the yellow zest, or slice the whole peel paper-thin as Shaker lemon pie does; either way chop it as fine as the recipe insists.
- "A little flour and water"Genuinely unspecified. For a 9-inch pie, 3 tablespoons flour and about 1/2 cup water gives a filling that sets without weeping; add the water gradually, since three lemons vary a great deal in juice.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake a double-crust fruit pie at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then 350F for 30 to 35 minutes until the top is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents.
- Light brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was generally less refined than today's white sugar with molasses added back, though how close it came to any particular modern product is hard to pin down. One and one-half cupfuls suits this much acid; reduce it much and the pie turns sour.
- Two crustsEnough pastry for a 9-inch bottom and top. Cut steam vents or the wet filling will lift the lid; a rim sealed with a fork or crimped firmly keeps the syrup from running out.
- RaisinsA large cupful, seeded and chopped. Modern seedless raisins skip the first step; chop them by hand or pulse briefly, as a food processor turns them to paste.
- Yield and servingOne 9-inch pie, eight slices. Let it cool at least two hours — cut warm, the filling runs.
Lemon-and-raisin pies belong to the large nineteenth-century family of "mock mince" pies, often said to have been made when no jar of mincemeat was in the cellar. The raisins, brown sugar and whole chopped citrus supplied the sweet-sour, spiced-fruit character of a mince pie from ingredients that kept indefinitely on a pantry shelf. Using the entire lemon, peel and all, was ordinary thrift in a period when imported citrus was an occasion rather than a staple, and the same idea survives in Shaker lemon pie, usually associated with the Kentucky Shaker communities at Pleasant Hill and South Union, where thin-sliced whole lemons are sugared overnight and baked between two crusts.