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Butterscotch Pie
1 egg 1 cupful dark brown sugar 1 cupful milk 3 tablespoonfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 3 tablespoonfuls water 1/4 teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar 1 baked crust 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract Put yolk of egg into saucepan, add brown sugar, flour, milk, water, Crisco, salt, and vanilla. Stir over fire until it thickens and comes to boiling point. Pour into baked pie shell. Beat up white of egg, then beat powdered sugar into it. Spread on top of pie and brow lightly in oven. Sufficient for one pie.
A stovetop butterscotch custard poured into a pre-baked shell and topped with a thin meringue. The whole thing hinges on cooking the filling long enough for the flour to lose its raw taste and set the custard.
- CriscoThis book was written to sell Crisco, and the 2 tablespoons here are simply fat for richness. Butter is the better choice in a butterscotch filling and gives the flavor the name promises.
- Cook it past the boil"Stir until it thickens and comes to boiling point" is the minimum. Let it bubble slowly for a full minute or two, stirring constantly, or the 3 tablespoons of flour will taste pasty and the pie will slump when cut.
- The water is not a mistakeThe recipe adds the 3 tablespoons of water along with the milk rather than making a roux, so treat it as part of the liquid. Whisk the flour into the brown sugar dry first to prevent lumps.
- Brown sugar"dark brown sugar" in a book of this period was probably at least as dark as today's dark brown. A cupful, packed, is right; light brown will give a paler, milder pie.
- Meringue proportionOne tablespoon of powdered sugar to one egg white makes a soft, barely sweet topping that weeps easily. Two tablespoons per white is the modern standard and holds much better.
- Browning temperatureNo oven heat is given. Spread the meringue to touch the crust edge all around and brown at 400F for 8 to 10 minutes, watching it, or under a broiler for a minute or two.
- Cooling and yieldFill the shell while the custard is hot so it seals, then cool at room temperature before refrigerating. One 8- or 9-inch pie; cut with a hot wet knife.
- Filling depthOne cup of milk plus the water makes a shallow filling by current standards. A 8- or 9-inch shell suits it; a deep-dish pan will look half empty.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble as promotional literature for Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company introduced in 1911 -- which is why a plain butterscotch cream pie calls for Crisco rather than the butter it would otherwise want. The pie itself belongs to a large American family of stovetop cream pies, thickened with flour or cornstarch on the range and finished with a meringue made from the leftover white, a thrifty structure that let one egg do two jobs. The name butterscotch is generally traced to the combination of butter and brown sugar cooked together; the "scotch" element is usually explained either as a reference to Scotland or as the old sense of to scotch, to score a hardened sheet of candy before it sets, though neither explanation is firmly documented.