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Apple Custard Pie
For one large pie use one pint of apple sauce and a tablespoon of butter, the yolks of three eggs beaten well with a pinch of salt and half a cup of sugar. Beat this into a pint of hot milk and bake in shallow tin or dish lined with crust. (Pastry must be baked before pouring in the custard). Flavour with lemon or spice. When done spread over the top a meringue made with the whites of the eggs and a half cup of sugar.
A thrifty custard pie that uses up a bowl of apple sauce, thickened only by egg yolks and baked in a pre-baked shell. The volume is the first thing to reckon with.
- The quantities make more than one pieA pint of apple sauce plus a pint of milk plus three yolks and the sugar comes to nearly five cups of filling. A 9-inch shell holds appreciably less than that, so plan on a second shell or halve the filling.
- A pint is two cupsBoth the apple sauce and the milk are two cups each. The recipe asks only for a "shallow tin or dish" and gives no diameter, so read "one large pie" as the largest shallow plate you have.
- Blind-bake fully, not partlyThe parenthesis is the hinge: this filling is loose and will soak a raw crust to paste. Bake the shell through until dry and lightly coloured, then cool it before filling.
- Temper the eggs"Beat this into a pint of hot milk" needs doing in a thin stream with constant whisking, or the yolks scramble. Melt the butter into the warm apple sauce first so it disperses.
- Oven temperatureBake the custard at 325-350F. Higher and the eggs curdle and weep; the mixture is already thin from the apple sauce and has no flour to protect it.
- Judging donenessThe centre should still wobble slightly when the edges are set, about 170F on a thermometer. It firms as it cools. A fully set centre in the oven means an overcooked, watery pie.
- Unsweetened apple sauceHalf a cup of sugar in the custard assumes plain, tart sauce. Commercial sweetened apple sauce will make the pie cloying; use unsweetened, and taste before adding all the sugar.
- The meringueThree whites with half a cup of sugar is a soft meringue. Spread it to touch the crust all round to stop shrinking, and bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes until the peaks colour.
- Flavouring and yield"Lemon or spice" means grated zest, or cinnamon and nutmeg with a little clove. A large shallow pie of this size serves about 8.
Custard pies built on a fruit purée were a standard way of stretching both eggs and fruit in nineteenth-century American kitchens, and apple sauce was among the purées a household was likely to have on hand. The recipe belongs to a family of combination pies (apple custard, squash, pumpkin) that share the same method: a cooked vegetable or fruit pulp thinned with hot milk, bound with yolks, and crowned with the whites so nothing is wasted. The instruction to bake the crust first, set off in its own parenthesis, marks the practical difference between this and an ordinary two-crust apple pie, and the meringue topping reflects the late-Victorian fashion for finishing pies and puddings with a browned white-of-egg cap rather than a lid of pastry.