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Cream Pie Filling
Save out one-fourth cup of the milk with which to stir the flour smooth. Steep the cocoanut in the remainder of the milk for one-half hour. Strain out the cocoanut, pressing it well to get out all the goodness. Measure the milk, and if it is less than the original quantity (one and three-fourths cups), add milk to make that amount, and return it to the double boiler. Add the sugar, and reheat. When boiling hot, stir into it the flour, which has been stirred smooth with the one-fourth cup cold milk. Allow the mixture to cook ten minutes. Separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs. Beat the yolks. Stir into them a little of the hot milk mixture, then stir the yolks into the hot mixture. Cook two minutes. Add the salt. Pour into the baked crust. Put a meringue on the pie, made of the whites of the eggs and three tablespoons sugar folded into the stiffly beaten whites. This pie is very good made in a granola crust.
A coconut-infused cream filling for a pre-baked shell, thickened with flour rather than cornstarch and finished with a meringue. The written quantities beyond the milk have not come down with the method, so treat the proportions below as guidance from standard practice of the period.
- ProportionsOnly the milk (1¾ cups) and the meringue sugar (3 tablespoons) are specified in the text as given; the amounts of coconut, sugar, flour and eggs are not stated. A filling of this type normally runs about 3 tablespoons flour, ⅓ to ½ cup sugar and 2 eggs to 1¾ cups milk, with ½ to ¾ cup coconut for steeping.
- The hinge: temper the yolksStirring a little of the hot starch mixture into the beaten yolks before returning them to the pan is what keeps the filling smooth. Reversed, the yolks scramble and no amount of beating will recover the texture.
- Cocoanut"Cocoanut" in books of this period may mean either freshly grated coconut or the dried shredded coconut then sold in packets; the recipe does not say which. Desiccated or unsweetened flaked coconut works; if you use sweetened, cut the sugar in the filling.
- Steeping and strainingThe half-hour steep extracts coconut flavour without leaving fibre in the custard, which is why the coconut is pressed and discarded. Expect to lose a few tablespoons of milk to the coconut, hence the instruction to remeasure and top up.
- Double boilerCalled for because flour-thickened milk scorches easily over direct heat. A heavy saucepan over low heat with steady stirring does the same job faster; the ten-minute cook is there to gelatinise the flour and cook out the raw taste, so do not cut it short.
- Meringue and ovenNo baking direction survives for the meringue. As a modern working figure, a moderate oven of about 350F for 12 to 15 minutes will set the peaks and colour them lightly, but the text gives no guidance. Spread the meringue so it touches the crust all round or it will shrink and weep.
- Granola crustThe granola of this period was a coarse baked, ground whole-grain cereal, not today's oat-and-honey clusters. A crumb crust of a plain toasted whole-grain cereal, bound with a little fat, is the nearest equivalent.
- YieldThe text does not state a size; the quantity of filling suits an 8- to 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Chill several hours before cutting; a flour-thickened custard slices cleanly only when fully cold.
Good Food and How to Prepare It sits in the American health-reform cookery tradition, and the closing line about a "granola crust" points that way. Granola was a baked, ground whole-grain cereal associated with Battle Creek, Michigan, in the late nineteenth century, and its appearance as a pie crust is the sort of substitution these books favoured: whole grain in place of white flour and lard. The filling itself is otherwise conventional for the era, a flour-thickened boiled custard rather than a baked one, which let a cook use a shell blind-baked in advance and finish the pie with a meringue in a few minutes. Steeping coconut in the milk and then straining it out is one way period recipes got coconut flavour without the chew.