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Pineapple Pie
One cup sugar, two eggs, one tablespoon of cornstarch, butter size of an egg. Stir all into the juice of one can of pineapple, boil together for five minutes; when cold, add the pineapple. Bake the crust first, put in the mixture, cover with whipped cream.
— Mrs. J. I. Woodruff
A cornstarch-and-egg pineapple filling poured into a blind-baked shell. The whole thing hinges on treating the filling as a stirred custard rather than something you can walk away from.
- Butter size of an eggUsually read as about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Nineteenth-century cooks measured butter by eye against a hen's egg, so the amount was never exact.
- The can of juice is ambiguousThe recipe does not say what size can, and the syrup drained from a can of sliced pineapple varies. Aim for about one cup of liquid; top up with water if your can gives noticeably less.
- Do not boil it hardTwo eggs plus one tablespoon of cornstarch in a cup of acidic juice can curdle at a hard rolling boil. Whisk the sugar, cornstarch and eggs together first, add the juice cold, then bring it up slowly over medium heat, stirring constantly, and hold it at a bare simmer for the five minutes so the cornstarch loses its raw taste.
- Canned pineapple onlyThis matters more than it looks. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests egg protein and will leave you with a slack, weepy filling. The canned fruit and its juice have been heat-treated and the enzyme is dead.
- Fruit goes in coldThe instruction to add the pineapple only when the mixture has cooled is deliberate: stirring drained fruit into hot custard thins it and releases more liquid. Drain the pieces well and chop them small before folding them in.
- Blind-baking the shellThe recipe gives no temperature. By modern practice, line and weight the shell in a hot oven (around 425F) for about 15 minutes, then a few minutes more uncovered until the base is dry and pale gold. The filling is never baked, so an underdone crust will stay underdone.
- Setting and yieldFills one 9-inch shell, serving six to eight. Chill the assembled pie at least three hours before the cream goes on; a single tablespoon of cornstarch gives a soft set that firms up considerably cold.
- The creamWhip about one cup of heavy cream with a spoonful of sugar to soft peaks and add it no more than an hour or two before serving, or it will begin to weep into the filling.
Pineapple in a village kitchen came out of a tin, and that tin is the point of the recipe. Commercial canning of Hawaiian pineapple expanded in the 1890s and 1900s, and by the time community cookbooks like this one were being assembled a fruit that had once been a hothouse luxury or a carved centerpiece could be bought canned. This recipe uses the whole can, syrup and all, and the structure is the standard American cornstarch cream pie adapted to a fruit juice base rather than milk. The signed attribution to Mrs. J. I. Woodruff is typical of subscription community cookbooks, which were often compiled and sold by a church or ladies' aid society to raise money, and which preserve ordinary home baking that professional cookbooks of the period tended to skip.