Lies and Lemons

Which leads us to lemon meringue pie

Lying is a talent that comes naturally to me. One therapist suggested it’s a sign of low self-esteem, and that is a possibility. But not the biggest reason. On a day-to-day basis, I find truth wanting in entertainment value. Why stick strictly to the facts when a little embellishment—or the occasional out-and-out tall tale—requires creative thinking and is much more enjoyable? What’s more, sometimes fibbing is a God-given obligation for the benefit of humankind.

Case in point: While working at a job I loved but under an extremely incompetent boss in an extremely dysfunctional office, the staff was forced to participate in one of those ridiculous team-building exercises. He ordered us to go around the table and reveal one proud deed none of the others knew about ourselves. Apparently there were quite a few staff members who walked old ladies across the street or rescued lame puppies. When it came to my turn, out popped in a very matter-of-fact tone the story of how I once performed as a contortionist in the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. The story wasn’t planned or rehearsed; it just flowed, as I confessed above, naturally out of nowhere. There was one follow-up question about how one contorts into a narrow box that is then pierced with swords, but, again, without pausing, I thought up an acceptable explanation. The whole mood of the room lightened into an astonished moment of levity before our boss pressed the next person. Come the break, a co-worker and friend for 15 years asked why I had never told him about my side job when he knew everything else about me. I confessed my transgression and we ran into the hallway least others became curious about why we were utterly collapsed in hysterics.

And this is where lemon meringue pie makes its appearance.

medieval kitchen painted by Vincenzo Campi in 1580

I spent last week doing more research than I needed to do about cooking in the Middle Ages. It was for a story I was exchanging with Kate McDermott’s terrific and more popular newsletter, a kindness she extended to me in an attempt to let more people know about America Eats! The goal was that, perhaps, some of her readers would join my dedicated but lonely few. I am eternally grateful to Kate and to those of you who decided to give my newsletter a try.

I know a lot about medieval history and how people cooked, but, still, the research was a slog. I needed a break and got sidetracked with wishing there was a lemon meringue pie downstairs in the kitchen waiting as a reward for all the work I was putting in. Pie is necessary any time of the year, but, come January, nothing helps more than the sunny lightness of this pie. January is the month when winter begins to feel too long, heavy with the expectation that there are at least two more months of dismal weather ahead. By now, our bodies turn numb with the thought of facing more hearty stews and soups. My husband turned down bread pudding the other night—a sure sign winter’s cabin fever is setting in and spring can’t come soon enough.

I should have been asleep instead of reading what Henry II served at the wedding banquet of his 11-year-old daughter to the 10-year-old son of Alexander III of Scotland (a ton of game meat and 25,000 gallons of wine). Instead of continuing with that, I decided to search for the history of lemon meringue pie as the next best thing to actually having one in the house. This is when I came upon an account of how lemon meringue pie was created by some fortuitous blunder in the Middle Ages! Joan Didion once called coming upon moments such as this, when a story suddenly comes into focus, gold. Sleep-deprived lesser writers think of them as better than sex.

The story goes that a sleep-deprived young apprentice to the town’s boorish baker mixed up the recipes for the day’s common pies by adding lemon meant for meat pies to the custard for apples pies. Upon hearing of the boy’s mistake, the baker took to beating him. The kitchen soon erupted with his violence upon the child, the tables upended, utensils bashed about, and a huge bowl of beaten egg whites tossed up in the air with some of its contents plopping haphazardly on top of the mixed-up apple pies.

Pie baking in Medieval times, image stolen from Libby Herz’s story about the history of lemon meringue pie.

I will let you read the enormously entertaining story told well by Libby Herz. Her website, cupcakesruletheatmosphere, seems to no longer exist, which leaves me broken-hearted, for I would love to be friends with a superb fellow liar.

As for me, I am now off to make a lemon meringue pie using Libby’s recipe.