Home › Village Receipts › Cream Pie
Cream Pie
For Crust-One cup and a half of flour, three-fourths of lard, a pinch of salt, two tablespoons of water. Mix as usual. Line deep pie tin and bake before filling.
For Filling-Two eggs, one pint of milk, one-half cup sugar, two heaping tablespoons cornstarch; make into paste with cold milk. Heat milk in double boiler, separate eggs, add beaten yolks to milk with sugar, and add cornstarch last, stirring constantly until it thickens. Cook fifteen minutes, flavor with vanilla. Pour into pie and beat whites of eggs stiff for meringue top of filling. Serve very cold.
— Mrs. R. P. Conkling
A plain village custard pie: blind-baked shell, cornstarch-thickened boiled custard, meringue on top. The old text leaves out a few things a modern cook expects, and one measurement is genuinely unclear.
- "Three-fourths of lard"The unit is missing. Three-fourths of a cup of lard to a cup and a half of flour would be a very rich, short crust. Start at half a cup if you want a crust that handles easily.
- Two tablespoons of water is a minimumWith a lot of lard the dough may come together on that alone, but add ice water a teaspoon at a time until it just coheres. "Mix as usual" means cut the fat in until it is the size of peas, then bind.
- Blind bakingLine a deep 9-inch tin, prick the base, weight it with beans or pie weights, and bake at 425F for about 15 minutes, then 375F until the shell is dry and pale gold, another 10 to 12 minutes. An unweighted shell will slump.
- The hinge: temper, then add the starchFollow the order given. Beaten yolks go into the hot milk off the direct heat, then the cornstarch slurry, with constant stirring. Dumping cold starch and raw yolk into scalding milk together gives you lumps and a curdled edge.
- Fifteen minutes is right, in a double boilerCornstarch needs sustained heat to lose its raw taste and set fully, and the water bath keeps it from scorching. In a heavy saucepan over direct heat you would cut that to five or six minutes with unbroken stirring.
- Milk for the paste"Make into paste with cold milk" most likely means a few tablespoons taken from the pint rather than extra milk. Slake the cornstarch in that and keep the rest for heating.
- The meringue is unfinished as writtenTwo whites beaten stiff with no sugar and no baking will weep and slide, and uncooked white carries a small salmonella risk. Beat in about a quarter cup of sugar, spread it so it seals to the crust edge all around, and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until the peaks colour.
- Serve very coldChill at least four hours so the custard sets. Cutting it warm gives you soup. One deep 9-inch pie, eight modest slices.
Cream pie in American community cookbooks of this period means a boiled custard filling in a pre-baked shell, distinct from the custard pie that bakes raw in its crust and from the New England "cream pie" that is really a filled cake. Cornstarch is what makes this version possible: commercially milled corn starch became a cheap pantry staple in the second half of the nineteenth century and let cooks thicken a pint of milk firmly enough to slice, using only two eggs. The meringue is the thrift at the heart of it he whthose left over from the yolks go straight back on the pie, so nothing is wasted. The attribution to Mrs. R. P. Conkling is typical of the cookbook that names its contributors, where each name stood as both credit and endorsement among neighbours who knew her table.