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Puff Paste: Grated
Sweet-Potato Pie. 2 cupfuls boiled sweet potato, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 2 tablespoonfuls lemon juice, 1 cupful sugar, Grated rind lemon, 1 tablespoonful ginger, 1 tablespoonful cinnamon, 1 teaspoonful salt, grated nutmeg, 2 cupfuls milk, Yolks 3 eggs, Rub potatoes through a sieve, add butter, lemon juice, sugar in which have been mixed the grated rind of lemon, ginger, cinnamon, salt, and grated nutmeg. Stir well together, add milk and the beaten yolks of eggs, and last the whites of eggs beaten stiff. Fit the paste to the pan, dust with flour, fill, and bake.
Custard Pie. ½ cupful granulated sugar, 1 tablespoonful cornstarch, 2 cupfuls milk, 3 eggs, Pinch salt.
Add cornstarch to sugar, mix well, stir it into milk, boiling hot, and simmer five minutes. When cool, add eggs, well beaten, and salt. Line a deep pie pan with paste, dust with flour, and fill three quarters full with the mixture. Bake in a moderate oven until firm in the center. Grate nutmeg over the top, and serve cool.
Crumb Lemon Pie. cupful lemon juice, cupful sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, eggs, Grated peel 1 lemon, 1 cupful stale sponge-cake crumbs.
Strain the lemon juice over the crumbs and soak half an hour, cream the butter, add half the sugar, then, one at a time, the yolks of eggs, then the balance of the sugar, with the lemon peel, and a pinch salt. With a fork mix the crumbs well with the lemon juice, and stir them into the butter and sugar, beating well, then add the whites of eggs beaten stiff.
Bake, and serve like custard pie.
Lemon Pie. 2 cupfuls boiling water, 1½ cupfuls sugar, cupful lemon juice, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 tablespoonful cornstarch, Grated peel 1 lemon, Yolks 3 eggs.
Mix the sugar and cornstarch well together, add them to the boiling water, and cook five minutes. Remove from the fire, add butter, lemon juice, peel, and lastly the eggs beaten very lightly. Line a deep pan with the paste, dust with flour, fill three fourths full with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven till firm in the center. When cool, cover with a meringue made from whites of eggs.
Vanilla Cream Pie. 1 tablespoonful cornstarch, cupful sugar, 2 cupfuls boiling milk, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Mix together cornstarch, sugar, and boiling milk. Cook five minutes, then add, stirring rapidly while adding, well-beaten eggs. Continue cooking until the egg is delicately cooked but not curdled, remove from the fire and stir butter into the mixture. When the butter is perfectly mixed with the custard, add the vanilla, and pour into freshly baked tart shell.
Orange cream pie and lemon pie may a PUFF PASTE be made by using orange or lemon extract in place of vanilla.-EMMA P.
EWING.
Lemon-and-Raisin Pie. 1 cupful chopped raisins, Juice and rind 1 lemon, 1 cupful sugar, 1 cupful water, 1 teaspoonful cornstarch.
Boil the mixture ten minutes; bake between double crusts.
Green-Currant Pie. 1 cupful green currants, cupful sugar, 1 tablespoonful butter, Yolks 2 eggs, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 tablespoonful water.
Mash currants and sugar, using a wooden potato masher. Beat to a cream butter and sugar, then add in successive order the yolks of eggs, flour, water, and the mashed currants. Line a deep pan with pastry, fill with the currant mixture, and bake. When done, cool slightly and cover with a meringue made of the whites of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls sugar, and vanilla to flavor. Bake in a slow oven until delicately brown.
Apple Pie with Pineapple Flavor. 3 tablespoonfuls grated pineapple, 1 tablespoonful water, 3 tablespoonfuls sugar.
Bake an apple pie in the usual way, but without sweetening. While it is baking, take the pineapple, water, and sugar, and simmer together till the fruit looks clear. When the pie is taken from the oven, remove the top crust, spread the pineapple over the apple, replace the cover, and set the pie away to cool.
German Cherry Pie.
Make a cherry pie as usual, but omit the upper crust. When nearly done, beat an egg light and add it to a scant cupful cream and a tablespoonful sugar. Pour over the top of pie, return to the oven, and bake until the custard is set.
Date Pie. 1 pound dates, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon, 2 cupfuls milk, 1 cupful sugar.
Soak dates in warm water overnight, then stew and sift the same as pumpkin. Into the pulp stir beaten eggs, cinnamon, milk, and sugar.
Bake in one crust. a 3 a, Frying Basket; b, Meringue Bag with Pastry Tubes, c. Vegetable Plane.
Fig Pie. pound figs, 1 cupful water, Whites of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls sugar, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice.
Make a rich bottom crust. Chop figs fine, cook with cupful water.
A run of custard and fruit pies meant to be baked in the puff paste given earlier in the section. They share a method and a set of period assumptions worth spelling out before you start.
- Oven temperatures"Moderate" here is 350F, "slow" is 300-325F. Custard-type fillings (sweet potato, custard, lemon, date, German cherry) are better started at 400F for 10-15 minutes to set the pastry, then dropped to 325-350F to finish without curdling.
- Dusting the shell with flourThis appears in three of these pies (sweet potato, custard, lemon) and is the hinge. A thin dust of flour over the raw crust absorbs the first of the liquid and keeps a wet custard from soaking through. Blind-baking the shell does the same job more reliably.
- Missing fractions in the lemon quantitiesSeveral of the lemon and currant fillings give "cupful lemon juice" or "cupful sugar" with no fraction stated, and the amount is genuinely unrecoverable from the text. For a 9-inch pie, 1/3 to 1/2 cup lemon juice against 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar is the usual balance.
- Vanilla Cream Pie eggsThe instructions call for well-beaten eggs but the ingredient list does not include them. A pie this size takes 3 eggs, or 4 yolks for a richer set.
- Spices by the tablespoonA tablespoon each of ginger and cinnamon in the sweet-potato pie is heavy by current taste, closer to a spiced pudding than to a modern pie. A teaspoon of each, with the nutmeg, gives a filling most people now prefer.
- Green currantsUnripe currants, picked hard and sour before colouring, were a June commodity in kitchen gardens and are effectively unbuyable now. Gooseberries are the nearest substitute; ripe red currants work but need the sugar cut back.
- Branded vanilla"McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla" is a period trade name; any good vanilla extract does the same work. Add it off the heat, as directed, or the aroma cooks off.
- Date and fig piesThe date pie relies on long soaking to make the fruit sieveable; overnight in warm water is still right for whole dried dates, while today's soft pitted dates need only 30 minutes and a short simmer before pressing through a sieve. The fig recipe as printed chops and cooks the figs without a soak.
- YieldThese quantities suit one deep pie pan of about 9 inches, cutting into 6 to 8 slices. The custard pie is directed to be served cool, and the others cooled before meringuing or setting away, since they continue to set as they come down from oven heat.
This cluster sits in the pastry chapter of an early twentieth-century household encyclopedia, following a puff-paste recipe. The mix tells you what an American pantry held: sweet potatoes and cornstarch, a pound of dried dates or figs bought in bulk, garden currants picked green, and grated pineapple used as a flavouring rather than a fruit in its own right. Sweet-potato pie of this kind is generally traced to the Southern kitchen, where the potato stood in for the pumpkin that dominated Northern custard pies. The signed entry from Emma P. Ewing places the page in a recognizable tradition: Ewing directed cooking schools and wrote widely on domestic science in the late nineteenth century.