Foodists

The Case of the 45 Minute Lemon Meringue

It was a dark and rainy Friday night. The Industrial Brand crew was meeting at Mark’s for an indulgent feast of Moules Normandes and homemade Cassoulet. Mike, our intern, was in charge of dessert. Somewhat new to the culinary world, he had left the studio at 4:50 pm in order to get to his sister’s house in time to make a lemon meringue pie. Now, at 7 pm, while scarfing down morsels from the charcuterie tray and washing it down with Beaujolais Nouveau, our scene of revelry was superimposed with poor Mike up to his elbows in egg whites and we began to wonder how he was ever going to pull it off.

But at that moment, the door opened and in walked Mike with pie in hand. It had taken only 45 minutes to make and it was tasty. Really tasty, to the point where we were all begging him to reveal how it had been done.

So dear reader, how did he do it?

It turns out that the recipe for this pie is a family secret that Mike will not divulge (apparently the only way to find out is to marry him, and none of us are so inclined). So we are asking for your theories and recipe submissions to try to solve the Case of the 45 Minute Lemon Meringue Pie.

This is what we know:

The crust was pre-made the night before. (This is not required to get the recipe right but it does not factor into the 45 minutes.)

There are no pre-made ingredients (ie. lemon pudding, canned meringue etc.).

The recipe does contain lemon rind. This much we know.

The pie contains a special ingredient without which the recipe would not work.

Submit your answers in the comment section and we will try to convince Mike to admit to a winner and then wrangle up a prize for you. Whatever the case, we will end up with a good collection of quick-to-make lemon meringue pie recipes. Bonne Chance!