Apple Cream Pie
Line a pie tin with crust, building up a scalloped edge. Fill crust with pared, quartered, and cored apples, arranging a row around the plate at the edge, then working toward the center till the crust is covered. Then arrange a few more quarters on top of the layer. Sprinkle over the apples two-thirds cup sugar with which two and one-half level teaspoons flour has been mixed. Cover with rich cream, and bake till the apples are tender.
A single-crust open pie in which cream and a little flour thicken into a light custard around the baking apples. The original gives no oven setting and no volume of cream, so both need filling in.
- OvenStart at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F for another 40 to 50 minutes. The pie is done when a knife slips through the apple quarters with no resistance and the cream has thickened and browned in patches.
- "Rich cream"Most likely the heaviest cream to hand, comparable to modern heavy or whipping cream, which is the safest substitute; about 1 cup is enough to come up around the apples without floating them. Half-and-half or light cream is thinner and more likely to give a loose, watery result.
- How many applesA 9-inch tin takes about 5 to 6 medium apples, quartered. Use a firm cooking variety that holds its shape -- Granny Smith, Northern Spy -- since quarters of a soft apple collapse before the cream thickens.
- Sugar and flourTwo-thirds cup sugar with 2 1/2 level teaspoons flour is the whole thickener here; there is no cornstarch and no egg. Toss the two together thoroughly before sprinkling so the flour does not sit in lumps and gum up in the cream.
- The scalloped edgeBuild the rim higher than you would for a covered pie. The cream rises and bubbles, and a low edge lets it run over into the oven.
- No top crustThis is an open pie throughout. Nothing needs to be laid over the apples before baking.
- CoolingThe cream filling is loose straight from the oven and firms as it cools. Give it at least an hour before cutting, or the slices will not hold.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings.
Cream pies of this kind belong to the dairy-farm end of American baking, where cream was on hand daily and a pie could be thickened with a spoonful of flour instead of eggs. The pattern -- fruit laid in a raw shell, sugared, flooded with cream, and baked open -- appears in nineteenth-century American cookery, and turns up under names like custard apple pie and, with the fruit changed, sour cherry or gooseberry cream pie. Books of this sort were written for households with ready access to cream, which may be why the instruction is simply "cover with rich cream" with no quantity attached.