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French Cream Pie
1 cup currants ¾ cup granulated sugar 1 cup sour cream 2 eggs (keep whites for frosting) ½ teaspoon cinnamon Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon baking soda (added last) Bake a good rich pie shell and cook the filling on top of stove. Reserve whites of eggs to be beaten light and spread on top of pie and slightly brown.
A stovetop sour cream custard poured into a baked shell and finished with meringue — closer to a boiled pudding pie than a baked custard. The original assumes you know how to keep eggs from scrambling, so that is where the attention goes.
- Cook it gently, and stop at the right pointThis is the hinge. Set the pan over low to medium-low heat and stir constantly; the eggs are the only thickener besides the fruit, so the filling must reach about 170-175F and coat the back of a spoon without ever coming to a hard boil. A double boiler is the safest way to get there.
- Currants means dried currantsZante currants — small dried grapes, sold beside the raisins — not fresh red or black currants. Plump them in hot water for ten minutes and drain if they are dry and hard.
- Sour cream, then and nowThen this meant sweet cream left to sour naturally, thick and quite acidic. Full-fat cultured sour cream is the right substitute; avoid light or fat-free versions, which contain gums and can break when heated.
- The baking sodaIt is there to neutralize the acid in the soured cream, which both mellows the flavour and helps keep the cream from curdling. One teaspoon to a single cup of cream is generous by modern standards and can leave a soapy, faintly metallic taste — half a teaspoon suits today's cultured sour cream better. The original says only that it goes in last; stir it in off the heat and expect it to foam.
- Bake the shell fully"A good rich pie shell" means a blind-baked, completely cooked crust — the filling goes in hot and does no further baking except a brief browning. Blind bake at 400F, weighted, until dry and pale gold.
- The meringueTwo whites will take about 4 tablespoons of sugar, beaten to firm glossy peaks. Spread it over filling that is still warm and seal it to the crust all the way round, or it will shrink and weep. Brown at 400F for 5 to 7 minutes, or under a broiler with close watching.
- YieldEnough for one 8- or 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Chill at least three hours before cutting; the filling firms considerably as it cools.
Sour cream pies of this kind are often associated with the prairie baking tradition of Canada and the northern American plains, though they are equally at home in Pennsylvania Dutch and Midwestern baking, where cream soured on its own in the cold pantry and dried fruit was the only fruit available for much of the year. Raisin, currant and "vinegar" pies all did the same job: sweetness and body from the larder rather than the orchard. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, and it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by home cooks across the country, which accounts for the telegraphic style here o pven temperature, no pan size, no timings, because the contributor assumed anyone reading had made a boiled custard before. The name "French" is often said to have been attached loosely in period cookbooks to almost any dish finished with cream or a meringue, and it does not appear to point to a French origin.