Lemon Meringue Pie: Absolutely worth it

As the weather gets colder, the oven gets hotter!

Lemon Meringue Pie Lemon Cream Pie ¾ cup sugar 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 1¾ cups water 2 eggs, separated Juice of 2 lemons Grated rind of 1 lemon ¼ cup sugar (for meringue) 1 baked pie shell Place the egg yolks into a medium mixing bowl, beat them slightly, and set aside. Sift sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt into a saucepan or the top of a double boiler. Add boiling water and whisk until smooth. Then place over boiling water or a medium burner (depending on whether you're using a double boiler or not). Cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens completely. Don't take it off the heat as soon as it thickens just a little, but keep going until it stops getting thicker. Remove from heat. While whisking in the yolks hard, gradually drop in spoonfuls of pie filling until you have beaten in about one-third to half of it. Then return this to the heat and cook about one minute longer. Remove from heat again, then stir in lemon juice and rind. Allow to cool completely. When everything is cooled, heat oven to 400°. Pour and spread the filling into the pie shell. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then, with the mixer running, gradually add the sugar one spoonful at a time. Allow each spoonful of sugar to completely dissolve before adding the next. Then spread this onto the pie, being sure it touches the crust on all sides. You may find it easier to put the meringue into a food-storage bag with a corner cut off, and pipe it into place. If it looks bad, just spread it with a knife or a spatula afterward. Place in the oven and bake until the meringue is golden on top. If you make the meringue a bit ahead of time and find it's turned into a bowl of stiff and dry foam while sitting out, just put the mixer back in there and beat it again. Note: Meringues really only last a day before they start dripping and oozing out little brown beads. And they don't freeze well. So if you want to make this pie ahead of time, you really can't freeze it with the meringue on top. You have two options. The easiest: forget the meringue. You can put spray-can of whipped cream next to the pie if you like. The other choice: freeze or refrigerate the egg whites (depending on how far ahead you're making this). Then make the meringue and put it on top of the pie the day you serve it (or the day before at earliest). Unknown source (looks like a magazine clipping or a food label), probably 1930s-1940s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

The freestanding pastry cases may have been a bust, but the lemon pie we put in them was really good. It comes from my great-grandmother's binder since I already had it open to learn how to make underwhelming tarts. She actually has two lemon pies. I chose the one that has more lemon in it. Conveniently, it also uses fewer eggs.

As we piled our ingredients into the sifter, I could tell that this pie absolutely could not stay runny after cooking. That's a lot of flour and starch. 

The recipe says to cook "until thick," and boy did this ever. Also, I know we're supposed to use a double boiler, but sometimes I like to live dangerously. Anyway I don't have a double boiler at hand and didn't feel like perching a mixing bowl over a pot.

 

We are next directed to simply "stir in slightly beaten egg yolks", but I didn't trust that instruction for a minute. (Lest we forget the egg curds in our hot macaroni salad.) 

When tempering eggs, you usually pour your hot mixture into the eggs while beating them very hard. But today, we had to carefully aim small blobs of steaming goop into the little bowl. It was annoying, but do you see any scrambled eggs?

After mixing in the lemon juice in, I tried a bit on the tip of a spoon. And... if you want your pie to make you pucker, this is the recipe for you. I might use this recipe the next time I want to put lemon filling in a cake. For one thing, it won't go gloopy and get squeezed out between the layers. Second, the concentrated lemon flavor is perfect for spreading thinly between cakes.

But this was too beige for me. This may be the natural color of lemon pie, but we have artificial dyes now. 

I nearly dyed the whole thing purple instead.

With the magic of petrochemical artifice, it's now the exact color of that cheap filling in gas station pies!

I really liked this. Some lemon pies are basically sugary cornstarch with a little bit of lemon that fell in by accident, but this is definitely a lemon pie. I loved how tart it was. We have another lemon pie in this book, and I'm a little bit afraid I already made the good one. 

 In full disclosure, after two days the meringues were starting to put out little brown droplets and get a little drippy. So if you want to make lemon pie more than a day ahead, you should forget the meringue and just squirt canned whipped cream on top at serving time.