welcome friends welcome back to Sunday morning and the old cook book show today
I want to do a recipe out of the new magic in the kitchen 208 delicious
dishes made with sweetened condensed milk now this is an undated
cookbook from Borden or Eagle Brand condensed milk it's undated but
generally most people say that this is from 1930 and it has a recipe for magic
lemon cream pie in it and I want to do this recipe because I also have an
earlier version of this cookbook that has a lemon pie recipe in it and you can
see between the two cookbooks the evolution of the recipe how the recipe
changed and moved forward the earlier cookbook is generally accepted to be
1928 or 1929 again undated so I've done my best to sort of grab those dates I've
spoken to people who research these things and even they are a little
doubtful of the exact date so I always got a date range and I find this magic
lemon pie recipe very interesting because from this point forward you
start to see lemon pies made this way with regional variations as to how the
meringue was put on top if the meringue was put on top if the meringue was
folded in and you start to see all of these variations and we've done one of
these pies before on the channel about five years ago 2015 I did a variation of
this pie and it's one that my mom always made and so presumably she got the
recipe from numerous cookbooks that copied this recipe over and over and
over and over and over using whichever brand of condensed milk the recipe
writer for that cookbook wanted to use it is a very versatile recipe the other
reason I want to do this recipe is most food historians cite this recipe as the
starting point for the Florida key lime pie I know I can hear you screaming I
hear you screaming that the key lime pie came out way before this ever did and
that but evidence facts published recipes don't
seem to support that it seems that this is the starting point so I need put a
half a cup of juice so that was two and a half lemons worth of juice to get a
half a cup depending on how much you want to squeeze so I'm gonna do a key
lime pie in an episode coming up soon and when I do the key lime pie recipe
I'll go farther in-depth into why people think that this is the starting point
for the key lime pie generally though food historians outside of Florida
believe this to be the case whereas those inside Florida would beg to differ
okay this calls for two eggs separated so we'll put the whites in this bowl and
we're going to whip those into a meringue and the yolks go in over here
okay now that the yolks are in I'm going to pour in the lemon juice and we're
gonna whisk this and the lemon juice the acid from the lemon juice is gonna start
to curdle and thicken both the egg and the cream which is what gives this pie
its distinctive texture okay so we're looking good
now I need to whip these egg whites into a meringue so first off I'm gonna whip
them part way and then I'm gonna spoon in some sugar and whip them the rest of
the way okay I'm gonna start adding sugar now
and I like to use a superfine sugar and I've put in a little bit
whip it a little bit more and then maybe put in a little bit more after that okay
we're looking pretty good now there's not gonna be a lot of meringue I mean
it's only two eggs which isn't going to provide much of a topping but it's still
gonna taste great still gonna taste amazing
now it says to fill a baked pie shell it doesn't say what kind of pie shell I'm
pretty sure that what they mean is a short crust or a regular pastry pie
shell I don't really like that with this pie I am partial to either saltine
crackers or soda biscuits I really like a soda biscuit crust
I like Maria biscuit crust or or arrowroot biscuits I think those were
amazing and today I decided to use graham crackers because I really like
that as a crust for this pie as well and this is a nine-inch pie shell took me a
lot of digging down in the in the equipment room to find a smaller pie
shell today all of my pie shells are all of my pie plates sorry my pie plates are
nine and a half inches or 24 centimeters and they're really deep took me awhile
to find one that was smaller and shallower to fit this pie and on goes
the meringue now this goes into a preheated 350 degree oven for an
unspecified amount of time until Brown essentially the the filling doesn't need
to be cooked it will firm up all on its own especially since we're gonna put
this in the fridge later before we serve it you're pretty much just cooking the
meringue and getting a nice sort of brownish crust on it so into the oven it
goes ready daddy it's time to cut the pie
the anticipation I know so it's it's um I mean there's not a lot of meringue on
the top of it that's okay it is definitely a little bit conservative
with the eggs I know the the lemon pie that my mom makes it was essentially the
same she likes well yeah and it well it used
it used for eggs so two yolks in the filling and then Oh I mean four yolks in
the filling and then for you for whites to make that because everybody loves a
tall meringue it does I mean in the modern sense of things looks impressive
and all the rest yeah now I will fully admit that since I was a child lemon
meringue pie has been my choice of birthday it's your birthday pie birthday
meal so I'm super excited about the lemony treat are you I you know I'm okay
but you know can I try it now can I try
it we're pretty sure that I'm gonna know
what this tastes like because it's a pie that my mom used to make
and it's elsewhere on the channel called Island lemon pie from 2015 mm-hmm mm-hmm
smooth and I make it um for family gatherings and some people like it more
than a lemon meringue pie um I'm happy with meringue I'm happy with the lemon
yeah I just really like the lemon sweet yeah let me hold it I love it the flavor
is incredible on this and it's so easy to make and if you're nothing wrong with
this my mom did it all the time to make a lemon meringue pie out of the box
where you just pour the hot water in this is as simple or simpler with maybe
a little better flavor we're pretty good I mean as far as you know yeah wise go
they come pro box that's one of my favorite recipes this one from the mmm
2829 and this one from 1930 the earlier recipe you cooked with you cooked the
filling okay that's what they changed I think they realized that if you
the acid level so more lemon juice there's twice as much lemon juice in
this pie as in the earlier pie with that added acid it congealed everything or
curdled everything it's interesting cuz then I asked the question was I wonder
if it became easier to get hold of lemons depending upon where they were
looking we're also talking about a time period here where there was a complete
shift in what people grew in the in the mid 1920s there were a couple of
hurricanes that went through and cleared out a lot of groves and when they
replanted they replanted with newer varieties and so that might have been a
change as well and that whole citrus thing might be our bias being that we're
located a little farther and farther north where they don't grow yeah at all
yeah at all and without great care and you bring them in and you have a
tropical house tomatoes very special so alright you know this is a winner and
I'm sure that you have seen this in countless cookbooks and magazines and
websites and because this this recipe went on to be huge in the end make the
one that makes you happy well that's it so it's so you can instead of putting
the meringue on top you can whip up the meringue and fold it in yes to the
filling and then put it in the oven and that gives you a really super big and
fluffy yeah big and fluffy and it's it's got a creamier texture I I really like
that version as well yeah so thanks for stopping by we'll see you again soon and
you'll see these books again as I talk about key lime pie in the future hmm for
now yes let's go
you