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Maple Syrup Pie (No. 2)
1 cup maple syrup ½ cup water 2 eggs (whites for rosting) 2 tablespoons Five Roses flour Butter size of walnut Cook in double boiler. Bake the crust, then fill up with custard. Cover with meringue.
A cream-pie method in miniature: a cooked maple custard poured into a blind-baked shell and topped with meringue. The recipe assumes you already know how the parts go together, so here is the missing detail.
- The hinge: thicken it fully before it leaves the potTwo tablespoons of flour to 1½ cups of liquid is a soft set, and it only holds if the flour cooks out. Whisk the flour smooth with a little of the cold water first, then cook over simmering water, stirring, until it coats the spoon heavily — 10 to 15 minutes. Pulled early it will slump when sliced.
- "Whites for rosting" is a typoRead it as "whites for frosting." The two yolks go into the custard, the two whites into the meringue. Temper the yolks with a little of the hot maple mixture before returning them to the pot.
- Butter size of walnutRoughly 1 to 2 tablespoons; period sources vary. Stir it in off the heat at the end for gloss.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian all-purpose wheat flour. Ordinary all-purpose works directly; cornstarch would set firmer but was not what was meant.
- Blind-bake the crust properlyLine, weight and bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, then until the base is dry and coloured. A wet maple custard will soften an underbaked shell within the hour.
- Meringue, since the book gives no methodBeat the two whites to soft peaks with about 4 tablespoons of sugar, spread to the crust edge to seal it, and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until set and lightly browned. Spread it while the filling is still hot to help the underside cook.
- Maple syrupUse a darker grade for flavour; today's light amber syrup is milder than the farm syrup this book assumed. Do not substitute pancake syrup, which is corn syrup and will taste flat and set differently.
- Yield and servingOne 8- or 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Cool at least two hours before cutting; it is best the day it is made, as meringue weeps in the refrigerator.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to buyers of its flour, which explains why the brand name appears inside the ingredient list — these books were advertising as much as instruction, and the recipes were largely contributed by Canadian housewives, printed with their spelling and shorthand intact. Maple syrup pie belongs to the sugar-bush regions of Quebec, Ontario and the northeastern states, where syrup was the cheap sweetener on hand in quantity each spring and sugar was the thing bought at a store. That the book prints a No. 2 version at all suggests more than one version was in circulation; the family resemblance to butterscotch and vinegar pies is not accidental, since all of them solve the same problem of making a filling from a sweetener, a thickener and eggs without fruit.