When Life Gives You Lemons . . .
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Make Lemonade; or so the adage goes. My response would be . . .lemon meringue pie! No, wait, I would make Lemon Sponge Cake Pie! This was my father’s favorite pie and my mother’s go-to dessert for any special occasion. I don’t remember ever seeing it in a recipe book; Mom had it memorized and I made sure to put it in my collection of favorite recipes when I moved out on my own. (I’ve got to find that old red steno pad.)
In 1999, when I moved my mother from Wyoming to live with my sister in Georgia, Mom gave me what she said was her mother’s cookbook. It was an old, hardbound farm implement catalog from 1887 with newspaper clipping recipes glued on the pages. One clipping had the location of Sweetbrier Farm, April 11, 1886.
Clues
As I looked at it more closely a few years later, with some genealogy research experience under my belt, I realized it might have belonged to an earlier generation. My great grandmother Katherine Kinnie had been a cook for a family in Ontario, Canada, and in 1881, when the family immigrated to the US through Dakota Territory, she and her two daughters came with them.
In that collection of clippings I found two very similar versions of Lemon Sponge Pie. The pie is a single crust with a light, airy filling that is so refreshing! During baking the filling separates into two layers with the lighter sponge on top and the denser lemon curd below. I have never found this pie or anything similar in any cookbook. . . .
Down
the rabbit hole
. . . Until I did a Google search for vintage lemon recipes. I found dozens of pictures and recipes for the pie with various titles—Old Fashioned Amish Lemon Sponge Pie, Pennsylvania Dutch Lemon Sponge Pie or just Lemon Sponge Pie. The only differences were the number of eggs and the oven temperature. Among comments about the recipes was someone who grew up near Lancaster, Pennsylvania and went to the Amish and Mennonite Fairs. Every booth with baked goods had Lemon Sponge Pies for sale; it was a staple commodity.
That raised the question of how my mother was so familiar with it. My family was not from Pennsylvania or anywhere near the Amish. It probably came via my maternal grandmother or great grandmother who were from Canada. Then I remembered the Mennonite and Hutterite communities in the western prairie states including the Dakotas. I found a modern-day Mennonite Church a few miles south of Pembina where my immigrants lived in the 1880s. A search in the local newspaper, The Pioneer Express, told of common interaction between the Mennonite community in northeast Dakota Territory and communities on the other side of the border in Manitoba in the 1880s.
12 noon already?
Where has the morning gone? Or, where have I gone this morning? I’ve been to the Library of Congress looking at old newspapers at Chronicling America and I've been to the Family Search library to read histories of communities in Pembina and Walsh counties, Dakota Territory. I’ve gotten a deeper feeling of the social and ethnic atmosphere in which they lived. It was not an aspect I would have thought to explore and only came about with a trip down a rabbit hole, seeking a simple pie recipe.
Lemon pie was my Grandmother's favorite also. Lemons must travel and keep well because we certainly did not have the supply chain network in 1900 that we have now.
ReplyDeleteShaker Lemon pie!! Since it's made in a blender, I doubt that it's that old, but it came from my Uncle Bob. Now, I'm dying to try the Lemon Sponge Cake!!
ReplyDeleteKatie, since our conversation the other day I did a little more research--your pie is correctly titled Blender Lemon Pie. Shaker Lemon Pie was a recipe from the Shaker religious communities and was a two crust pie with a sliced lemon filling. Four lemons were sliced paper thin and combined with sugar for at least 24 hours before making the pie. Add eggs and put it in the crust, add the top crust and bake. Lemons, sugar and eggs--that's it!
DeleteLove lemon pie or cake. What a great combination. I'm going to give it a try. Appreciate reading your story behind it!
ReplyDeleteI loved the wonderful lemon meringue pie my mother-in-law made. She didn't use a recipe for any pie she made and pie with some type of fruit was served each evening when we visited.
ReplyDelete