A Philadelphia Chef Used Lemon Custard To Invent Lemon Meringue Pie

Are you hungry? Pie lovers and lemon lovers from across the country get your forks ready. August 15th is National Lemon Meringue Pie Day!

Served as a dessert, lemon meringue pie is a baked pie usually made with a crust of shortbread pastry, lemon curd filling and a fluffy meringue topping.

A meringue consists of egg whites whipped into stiff peaks with white sugar then baked in a slow oven.  It then becomes crisp. Meringue can also be served individually with fruit fillings or as a cookie.  Meringue was perfected in the 17th century, and lemon meringue pie, as we know it today, was developed in the 19th century.

1. Lemon trees bloom and produce fruit year-round. Each tree can produce between 500 and 600 pounds of lemons in a year.
2. Add the juice of one lemon to an equal amount of hot water for an anti-bacterial gargle.
3. Food historians say lemons have been in cultivation around the Mediterranean from as early as the first century A.D.
4. High in vitamin C, lemons prevent scurvy, a disease that causes bleeding gums, loose teeth and aching joints. To this day, the British Navy requires ships to carry enough lemons so that every sailor can have one ounce of juice a day.
5. California and Arizona produce 95% of the entire U.S. lemon crop.
6. Lemon meringue pie is a type of baked pie, made with a crust usually made of shortcrust or shortbread pastry, lemon curd filling and a fluffy meringue topping. Also it is prepared with a bottom pie crust. The meringue is placed directly on top of the lemon filling. No upper crust is used.
7. The Quakers generally receive credit for inventing lemon custard in the late 1700s. Philadelphian Elizabeth Coane Goodfellow, a pastry chef, businesswoman, and cooking school founder, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1806, expanded on lemon custard and invented lemon meringue pie.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

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