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Chocolate Pie (Two squares of chocolate)
Two squares of chocolate grated and boiled in two cups sweet milk; when cool add three eggs (saving the whites of two for frosting), one-half cup of sugar.
Frosting-One-half cup powdered sugar, whites of two eggs; beat to a stiff froth, put on pie when done, and brown in oven.
— Mrs. I. R. Fitchett
A baked chocolate custard pie with a soft meringue, written for cooks who already knew how to line a pie plate — the crust goes unmentioned. Everything hinges on not letting the custard boil.
- Two squares of chocolateA square meant one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, then sold in scored cakes. Use 2 oz unsweetened; grating is only to help it melt, so chopping fine works as well.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that older recipes called for with saleratus. Nothing special is required.
- "Boiled in two cups milk"Bring it just to a simmer to melt and disperse the chocolate, then cool. A hard boil reduces the milk and throws the custard's proportions off.
- Adding the eggs"When cool" is the instruction that matters. If the chocolate milk is still hot, one whole egg and two yolks will scramble on contact; cool to warm-to-the-touch and whisk the eggs in gradually.
- The missing crustThe receipt assumes a pastry shell already in the plate. A partially blind-baked 8- or 9-inch shell suits this filling best, since a wet custard poured into raw pastry tends to stay pale and soft underneath.
- Oven and donenessBake at 325-350F until the filling is set at the edge and still slightly wobbly at the center — roughly 170F internally. Custard continues to firm as it cools, and overbaking makes it weep.
- The meringueHalf a cup of powdered sugar to two whites is an old-fashioned soft meringue. Spread it to touch the crust all around, which keeps it from shrinking, and brown at 350-375F for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- YieldOne 8- to 9-inch pie, six modest slices. It is a lean filling by modern standards — no butter, no vanilla, no salt — so a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla are reasonable additions.
The Catskill Cook Book belongs to the great American genre of the community compilation: recipes gathered from local women, each credited by married name, sold to raise money for a church, library or hospital. The receipts are set down in the shorthand of cooks who assumed a reader already knew how much pastry to make and how hot her stove ran. Chocolate pies of this kind became practical for ordinary kitchens as unsweetened baking chocolate became a common and cheap grocery item over the course of the nineteenth century; before that, chocolate was more often drunk than baked with. The meringue topping made thrifty sense as well, using the two whites left over when the yolks went into the custard, and the whole approach — boil, cool, thicken with egg, brown the top — is the same one behind the lemon and butterscotch pies found in books of the period.