Date Pie
2 cups milk 1/3 pound sugar dates 2 eggs 1/4 teaspoon salt Few gratings nutmeg Cook dates with milk twenty minutes in top of double boiler. Strain, and rub through sieve, then add eggs and salt. Bake same as Custard Pie. Lemon Pie I 1/2 cup chopped apple 1 cup sugar 1 beaten egg 1/4 cup rolled common crackers 2 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind 1 lemon 1 teaspoon melted butter Mix ingredients in order given and bake with two crusts.
A custard pie sweetened almost entirely by the fruit. It leans on a companion recipe for the baking, so the numbers below fill in what the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: keep the custard below a simmerDates are cooked in milk in a double boiler precisely so the milk never boils. Once the eggs go in, the same rule applies in the oven -- a custard that bubbles will curdle and weep into the crust.
- Bake it like a custard pieThe original gives no temperatures, only the instruction to bake as for Custard Pie. By modern practice that means starting hot, around 425F for about 10 minutes to set the bottom crust, then dropping to 325-350F for 30-40 minutes. It is done when the outer two inches are set and the centre still shivers; it firms as it cools.
- Blind-bake or brush the shellA wet custard poured into raw pastry soaks in. Partly bake the shell, or brush it with beaten egg white and let it dry, before filling.
- 1/3 pound of datesAbout 5 1/3 ounces, roughly a cup once pitted. The ingredient line most likely names a variety ('sugar dates') rather than calling for sugar as well: the pie has no added sugar, and the fruit does all the sweetening. Softer, sweeter varieties such as Medjools will simply make it sweeter still.
- Straining is not optionalDate skins do not break down in twenty minutes of gentle cooking. Rubbing the mixture through a sieve is what makes the filling smooth rather than fibrous.
- Cool the milk before the eggsLet the strained date-milk drop to warm, not hot, then beat the eggs in gradually. Adding eggs to scalding milk gives you sweet scrambled egg.
- YieldAbout enough for one standard single-crust pie. Serve at room temperature or cold, not straight from the oven.