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Cream Pie (Pour a pint cream upon a cup)
Pour a pint cream upon a cup and a half powdered sugar; let stand until the whites of three eggs have been beaten to a stiff froth; add this to the cream, and beat up thoroughly, grate a little nutmeg over the mixture, and bake in two pies without upper crusts. Mrs. Henry C. Meredith, Cambridge City, Ind.
A four-ingredient baked custard pie from a book that assumes the cook already knows how a custard behaves. Almost everything left unsaid here concerns the oven.
- The hinge: low, steady heatNo temperature is given, and this is the one thing that decides the pie. A cream custard set above roughly 350F will curdle and weep; 325F until the filling is set at the edge and still trembles at the centre is the safe range. Carry-over heat finishes it as it cools.
- Powdered sugar in 1877This means finely ground granulated sugar, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Ordinary granulated or superfine is the closer match; modern powdered sugar will add starch the recipe never intended.
- A pint of creamTwo cups. The book's cream would have been unhomogenised and somewhere near what we sell as heavy or whipping cream, so heavy cream is the right substitute.
- Whites onlyThree whites and no yolks give a pale, delicate set rather than a rich yellow custard. The whites are beaten stiff, but the recipe then says to 'beat up thoroughly' with the cream rather than fold, so much of the air will be lost; treat any lightening of the filling as incidental.
- SweetnessA cup and a half of sugar across two pies is high by modern taste. Reducing to about a cup total is a reasonable adjustment; a custard with less sugar sets a little firmer and a little sooner, so watch the timing.
- Two pies, no top crustThe quantity fills two 8- or 9-inch shells fairly shallowly. Partially blind-baking the bottom crusts first is worth the trouble, since a wet custard poured into raw pastry at low heat rarely crisps underneath.
- NutmegThe recipe grates it over the mixture in the bowl, before the filling is divided between the two shells. Grating it over the surface once the filling is in the shell is a common alternative finish, but it is not what is written here.
- ServingCool completely before cutting, then chill. Each pie gives six to eight slices, and the filling firms considerably in the refrigerator.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) grew out of Ohio church and community fundraising cookery, and its recipes carry the names and towns of the women who sent them in, as this one does for Mrs. Henry C. Meredith of Cambridge City, Indiana. "Cream pie" in nineteenth-century American books is not one dish but a family of them: some are boiled cornstarch custards, some are sour-cream and raisin pies, and some, like this, are simply cream, sugar and egg poured raw into a shell and baked. A pie of this kind suits a dairying household, where cream was the plentiful thing; why only the whites are used here the recipe does not say, and the yolks may simply have been wanted for something else. An open top and a grating of nutmeg were a common finish for baked custards of the period.