It may surprise you to know that one of the most popular recipes in the Old Line Plate database doesn’t contain oysters, crab, or even chicken. As I’ve spent hours poring over community cookbooks and dusty manuscripts, I started to notice a ubiquitous pie that appeared in cookbooks – often in multiple forms. As of May 2019, I’ve collected 170 recipes for lemon pie.
For comparison, I have about 50 recipes for apple pies. 37 for White Potato Pie. I haven’t indexed every Maryland cookbook, but I don’t think that white potato is going to catch up to lemon any time soon.
I was recently at the Pratt Library paging through “How We Cook in Salisbury,” a late 1930’s cookbook put out by the St. Peter’s Church (in Salisbury, obviously), when I came across an especially amusing arrangement of lemon pie recipes.
One page had a recipe from Mrs. David Dallas, for “Lemon Pie.” Directly below that recipe was one from Mrs. A. Percy White, entitled “Superior Lemon Pie.”
How we cook in Salisbury, edited by the Woman’s guild of St.Peter’s church, Salisbury at the Enoch Pratt Library