Lemon Pie no. 2: It's always time for lemon pie

I can't imagine needing two lemon pie recipes.

Lemon Pie #2 3 egg yolks Juice and rind of 1 lemon 3 tablespoons flour 1 cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon butter 1 9-inch pie shell Heat oven to 350°. Bake the pie shell until slightly golden. Whip the egg yolks and lemon juice until very light, set aside. Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt into a saucepan. Whisk in boiling water until smooth. Add the lemon rind and stir over medium-high heat until it thickens and comes to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the butter and the egg yolks, stirring until the butter melts. Pour into the pie shell and bake until set, about 25-30 minutes. If desired, top with meringue and return to the oven until lightly browned. I thought this was better with whipped cream instead. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated, depending on preference. Meringue: Beat 3 egg whites (which you saved from separating the egg yolks for the filling) with an electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Continue beating while gradually sprinkling in 5 tablespoons of sugar. Beat until the sugar is dissolved and everything is smooth and glossy. Spread on the pie, return to the oven, and bake until the meringue is lightly browned. Handwritten note, probably 1930s-1950s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

We may have found why my great-grandmother occasionally needed "a pleasant change from a piece of lemon meringue pie." I can't imagine making lemon pie so often that I needed a second recipe for it.

I was going to skip over this recipe. We already made a lemon pie from her book and liked a lot. Why would anyone need multiple lemon pies? But then again, I have multiple brownie recipes for different moods (the extra-rich brownies, the very sweet brownies, the quick and easy brownies, etc). With that in mind, if there is any real variation in lemon pies, I've never found it. They always taste like the recipe on the back of the cornstarch box, whether I make them myself or buy them at the fanciest bakeries my budget can forgive. This pie looked a bit different, which made me wonder: are there other lemon pies and I've been missing out all this time?

Furthermore, I can't imagine why someone would write down a second recipe for the same pie unless it was better than the first.

And lastly, my car battery died and I wanted to bake my way out of being despondent. I didn't mourn the car battery, but I was forced to confront the insane prices of car parts amidst a trade war and an actual war. (Nothing has trickled down to my neighborhood yet.) I therefore wanted to make a pie for fun. Lemon pie it would therefore be. 

Three tablespoons of flour didn't seem like much until I got it into the sifter.

I hadn't made this pie yet, and I already liked it more than the one that shows up on the back of the cornstarch box. That one never seems to set unless I burn an offering to Fornax (the Roman goddess of hearth and oven), and even then I sometimes end up euphemistically calling it custard.This one uses a lot more to hold it together.

Let the record show that because we semi-always follow directions here at A Book of Cookrye, I did in fact get out the sifter for this. It seemed like more bother than I'd usually do for a lemon pie, but I'm not the one who wrote this down. 

As directed, I stirred in boiling water "until smooth," which was a lot easier than I expected. I thought I'd have to thrash this with a whisk, but we were done in a few seconds.

I did this in a separate bowl because I actually like my nonstick pot now.

The recipe doesn't mention using the lemon rind, but I think it really makes the flavor pop. I'm going to assume people would have done that instead of throwing out ingredients that were right on the countertop and waiting. Maybe cooks back then thought adding the rind was too obvious to write down, like "discard the eggshells."

This particular recipe calls for egg yolks "beaten light," which I've never seen in a lemon pie before. Usually you just put everything in the top of a double boiler and stir it for a minute or two. I put the whisk attachment into our mixer to see what the point of this might be. Seeing a single whisk (they were too cheap to put two in the box) hovering over the food made me think of when I replaced my broken handmixer with a power drill (which at the time led to several unsolicited and unculinary wall perforations).

I thought that one lemon wasn't enough for a whole pie, so I bought two. (Perhaps my great-grandmother meant a large lemon, rather than the smaller ones?) But a generously-dipped tasting spoon showed me that the first lemon was more than enough for the pie, so I put the other one away for future plans.

We are next told to add the butter and whipped egg yolks right to the pot. There's no mention of slowly spooning hot filling into the egg yolks until they're tempered. I was in a bit of a mood, so I decided to see if I really needed to bother with that. Maybe whipping them changes something and thus forestalls egg drop soup?

 

To my surprise, this actually worked. Nothing got scrambled, and we had a few swirls of foam that floated on top of the pot. I had thought they'd completely deflate and mix in. Perhaps this is like one of those sponge puddings that bake in layers? (Also, I really should have slipped in some artificial dye. This would have been really cute if it was pink.)

I decided not to make a meringue because they only last a day or so before deflating and dripping out those little brown beads. (Remember the rice pudding?) I do like a good meringue, but I also like desserts that last a bit.

However, this pie was incomplete without some sort of white fluff on top. I always thought people just did the meringue for presentation, but lemon pie is a lot better when dressed. So I gave it a dollop of whipped cream.

 

I didn't think a single lemon would be enough for a whole pie, but you'll notice that this is a relatively shallow pie so it all worked out. It was really good. More so than the other pie, this one tasted like fresh lemon. It's easy to make and hard to give away. If you don't want to make a whole pie of it, this would make really good lemon squares if you bake it on a shortbread cookie crust. Or, imagine it in a pavlova or a blitz forte.