This Saturday, I invited my sister over for her birthday. She asked for a lemon meringue pie. I had recently seen Good Eats Reloaded, and decided on Alton Brown’s recipe.
I’ve never been good at making pie crust, but this recipe was easy. You use the food processor, and then dump the fine sandy flour onto plastic wrap, Then you bring it together by smushing it, and magically it sticks together. Then I tossed it in the fridge overnight.
Alton has a new way of blind baking pie crust, where you put the pie crust in the shell, and then put another exact pan on top of it. Then you invert it, and back it upside down in the oven. I didn’t have 2 duplicate pans, so I just did a regular blind bake and it turned out fine.
I followed the lemon curd directions exactly, and it came out great. The meringue tasted great, but due to my not thinking, I used the paddle on the stand mixer instead of the wire whisk, and it had no volume. But it tasted great!!
My one question is, the second day, the lemon curd tasted very metallic. I only used stainless steel, except for the metal pie plate. So the curd didn’t touch the metal. And the second day,t he slice I had was taken out of the pan.
i did use cream of tartar in the meringue. Any ideas about why it tasted so metallic?
Hmmm - you called out what my first thought was - acid and aluminum don’t work well together, so I figured somewhere along the line the curd must have come into contact with aluminum.
so the first time you ate the pie it tasted fine - the second piece (the next day) tasted metallic? I have to wonder about the metal pie plate it was in overnight . . . . but I get why you’d think the crust would insulate the curd and prevent the metallic taste . . . .
If you still have the pie - I’d be curious if all the components taste metallic separately. Maybe the crust itself absorbed some lemon acid and since it was in contact with the metal pan became metallic . . . so maybe the crust tastes more metallic than the meringue for example. If that is the case - that could be the culprit .
The metallic taste is from the cream of tartar, probably transferred to your lemon curd overnight.
Try to make meringue with egg white and sugar, it’s enough.
It has a tinny, metallic taste that’s most noticeable in Snickerdoodle cookies.
I;m going to make another pie, and leave out the cream of tartar. I have enough lemons to do it again. Fingers crossed that’s what it is. I’m almost thinking of using a glass pie pan too. But then I won’t know if it was the metal pie pan and not the cream of tartar!
So yesterday I made a different recipe, a lemon tart. This time I used a new stainless steel whisk. I also used my silicone stirrer while the curd was cooking. The only other possible unknown metal that touched it was my thermopen, and I’m thinking that was stainless steel. There was no mettalic taste in it this time!
I still have to retest the lemon meringue pie with the cream of tarter.
Ha! It’s hard to find anything “new” these days. Too bad he didn’t attribute it to Jacques. I didn’t use that method, since I don’t have two pie pans the same size. But it’s certainly easier to manage it seems like, rather than lots of hot beans that have to cool off somewhere and then be stored again. I do love Jacques!!
It’s in either La Methode or Le Technique (guessing on the pronouns here!) and chances are, not M. Pepin’s original idea, either, since he apprenticed with French master chefs and bakers.
Here is my go-to lemon filling. From Pierre Herme via Dorie Greenspan via… Use Meyer lemons if you can. If not, what you have. Don’t tweak this recipe. It is sublime as it is and is what it is for good reason.
I also use this recipe wherever lemon curd is indicated.
