Lemon Cream Pie: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #1

So, you may or may not know I have an interest in historical things, especially day-to-day life from the past. I reenact civilian life from the early to mid 1860s. One of my friends from that group started a group with biweekly food challenges for a year. I decided to participate (as I will probably have more time to do this while on sabbatical in Peru than I would in the US). If you want to know more, here is their blog on the Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge.

Challenge #1: A Literary Dish

The Recipe: Lemon Cream Pie, Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery, Marion Harland [1882] (p. 362)

Lemon Cream Pie

1 teacup powdered sugar  (NOTE: I made this again with granulated white sugar and without the rind; leaving the rind out is great but use powdered sugar if you make this.  It creates a better texture.)

1 tablespoonful butter

1 egg

1 lemon, juice and grated rind, remove seeds with care

1 teacup boiling water

1 tablespoonful corn-starch

Stir the corn-starch into the water, cream the butter and sugar, and pour them over the hot mixture.  When quite cool, add lemon and beaten egg.  Take the inner rind off the lemon and mince very small.  Bake in open shell.

The finished product.

The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is in English, published 1872 in New York.

How Did You Make It: Followed directions closely, using my great-grandmother’s crust recipe (dates from late 1800s and have found similar recipes in cookbooks from the 1870s.) I used butter for the fat; I would have used lard but haven’t been able to find it in Peru. I even tried to buy some fat to render my own but couldn't find any from a trusted source. **See below for a mini-crust tutorial and recipe.**

I used milkfat instead of butter for the 1T butter. We have been pasteurizing our own milk here in Peru and I wanted to figure out a use for my milkfat; it also helped me feel more “old-fashioned” to use it. I used purchased butter for my crust as the author suggested only the finest butter should be used in pastry. I combined the milkfat and powdered sugar by cutting it in with two knives. I then put the cornstarch in a little bit of cold water and mixed. I boiled water and used the same teacup measure I had for the powdered sugar and combined the dissolved cornstarch and boiling water. I then poured the hot liquid over the top of the powdered sugar/milkfat rather than putting the sugar mix into the water. It meant less bowls dirtied. While the mixture was cooking, I grated the rind off the lemon, peeled the white rind off sections of lemon, seeded the lemon pieces, and minced the white rind. I wasn't entirely sure if “take inner rind off the lemon” meant that I should be baking the white rind into the pie or if she meant that the membranes should be discarded and I should mince the pulp. I left the membranes, minced the white rind and baked it all in the pie after juicing the lemon wedges. I figured that no one would die from it, since Shaker Lemon pie includes whole lemon slices.

Time to Complete: About 40 minutes at a leisurely pace to prepare the pie and approximately 70 minutes to bake. My oven temperature fluctuates (though I do have a stand-alone thermometer) and I baked the pie at around 375 F but sometimes it was more like 355-360 F.

Total Cost: About 5 soles (Peruvian money) or roughly $2 USD. Half the cost was the butter which is quite expensive here.

My ingredients and the "teacup" I used.

How Successful Was It?: Nice tart lemon flavor.  It has less sugar and less of a sweet taste than modern desserts, but it was still good. I served it to 5 other people and no one threw any away, though they took small slices to start and didn’t take seconds, either. I will be eating the rest of the pie.  If I made it again, I would use actual butter for the pie filling and skip putting the rind in, minced fine or not it still altered the texture of the pie enough that I would prefer the pie without. But, it was perfectly edible and gave insight into the past.

The finished pie, a little cracked on top but tasted just fine.

I was worried the pie was going to be really flat, but it baked and puffed up nicely.
This is just before it went in the oven.

How Accurate Is It?: Used cups and spoons instead of weighing or measuring ingredients. Mixed or cut by hand without extra tools. I have only one sad disposable aluminum pie pan here, having broken my glass pie dish. I would have baked in a tin or aluminum pie tin but I don’t have one here. I chose to use whole wheat flour (ground here) for the crust.  

My milkfat (used instead of butter in the pie filling).
I used a regular tablespoon instead of a measuring spoon.

I grated the rind instead of using my zester.

I seeded the lemon slices and peeled the rind,
then minced it fine for adding to the pie.

Interpretation: Inspired by this scene in Anne of the Island just before Gilbert proposes to Anne for the first time. Anne says she made a lemon pie. I learned in my research that lemon pies in the early 1800s were typically lemon custard pies; lemon meringue pies rose in popularity in the mid to late 1800s. I wanted to make something new to me and hypothesized that Anne may have made one of Marilla’s old recipes, hence more likely to be a lemon custard pie and not a meringue. Marilla would have learned to cook during the early/mid 1800s.

Time to Research: I think I put about 2 or 3 hours in doing online research. First I tried to figure out exactly when Anne was born and found this backwards timeline which was close enough for my purposes (put Anne at college in the 1870s and Marilla as being born in 1820 or so, so learning to cook and bake in the 1830s).

I also tried to figure out what kind of cookbook to use and attempted to learn who settled Canada and Prince Edward Island (French, Scots, and English) and what kind of heritage Matthew and Marilla would have had (Cuthbert is both a Scottish and English last name; I don’t recall the books saying anything about their ancestry and didn't do a search on that).

More time was spent trying to find a recipe. I learned about the history of lemon pies, specifically that what we know today as lemon meringue pies rose in popularity in the mid to late 1800s but the name didn't come to be called “lemon meringue” until later. I also found that lemon pie before the mid-1800s was most often a lemon custard pie. Since I've made lemon meringue pies before and wanted to try something new, I went in search of a lemon custard pie from an English or northern United States cookbook. Multiple strikeouts in finding either cookbooks that had no lemon pies at all or later cookbooks having only lemon meringue pies. I finally gave up and was going to make a meringue pie when I looked up the actual cookbook that was referenced in a secondary source and learned the original cookbook also had a lemon cream pie receipt. Success! 

Bonus Mini-Tutorial for Pie Crust: 

Recipe from my great-grandmother, Elsie Hagen

1 cup flour, 1/2 cup fat, 1/4 cup cold water.

• This recipe is quite flexible, I have used everything from white enriched, bleached flour to crunchy whole wheat flour to pre-made gluten free flour blends and they have all turned out fine.  You can use whatever fat floats your boat; my preferred fat is lard.  But I have made it with lard, butter, and half lard/half butter.  I don't cook with shortening but I'm sure that would work also.

Directions:

1. Put flour in bowl. 
2. Add fat (cut in small cubes) 

   

   You want your fat cut down a little before you start mixing it with the flour.
   Butter and lard work best when at room temperature. 

3. Cut fat into the flour until it's pebbled. 

   

   This is a good start but not quite enough.

   

   This is what you want your dough to look like just before you add water.

4. Add water 1-2 Tablespoons at a time.  Cut or mix with spoon or paddle until flour is wet through and you have a nice dough consistency.  If you need more water, continue adding.  If you mess up and the dough is too wet, add a little more flour.
5. Sprinkle some flour on a flat surface (counter, silpat, or whatever works for you).  Put the dough ball on the surface and gently shape into a ball.
6. Roll out the dough, starting in the middle of the ball and moving out to the edges until you have a nice circle. 

   

   I find that rolling on a flexible mat allows me to flip the dough into the pan,
   but you can also fold the dough in two and transfer to your pan.

7. Move dough to pan.  Reshape as needed.  You can do nice edge work or just sort of smush the dough in.