McG
Orange Pie.
One quart milk, eight eggs, one small teacup rolled cracker, half a cupful butter, two grated fresh oranges, or the juice and chopped peel of two, one wine-glassful wine. Cream the butter and sugar, add the wine, oranges, and eggs beaten to a foam, the whites separately, the milk and the cracker. Bake half an hour, in puff paste.-Mrs. M. B. B.
Orange Pie.
One pint of milk, three oranges, one cupful of sugar, three eggs, one and a half tablespoonful of corn-starch. Bake in puff paste.-Mrs. H.H.S.
Two versions of the same idea: a baked orange custard in a pastry shell, one rich and eggy, the other thickened with cornstarch. Both are written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing, so a few things need filling in.
- The missing sugarThe first recipe tells you to cream the butter and sugar but never lists a quantity. The second recipe's cupful to a pint is on the sweeter side, and may serve as a rough guide. Treat the amount in the first as genuinely unstated.
- Old measuresA wine-glassful is about 2 fl oz. A small teacup is roughly 3/4 cup. "Rolled cracker" means plain soda or water crackers crushed fine with a rolling pin, used here as the thickener in place of flour.
- Oven heatNeither recipe gives one. A custard pie of this sort wants a moderate oven, 350F, and the half hour is a starting point: bake until the center is set but still trembles slightly. Overbaking curdles the custard and weeps liquid into the crust.
- Grated oranges"Two grated fresh oranges" probably means the fruit worked down on a grater rather than the rind alone, which would bring pith and its bitterness with it, though the wording is ambiguous. The alternative the recipe itself gives -- juice plus finely chopped peel -- is the safer reading; use the zest, not the white pith.
- Puff paste and a wet fillingPuff pastry under a liquid custard goes soggy unless the shell is blind-baked first and the pastry is cold going into the oven. Ordinary short pastry, blind-baked, behaves better, though both recipes as written call for puff paste.
- Beaten whitesThe whites are beaten separately, and whipped whites in a thin custard will tend to rise and set as a lighter layer over the body of the filling. The recipe does not say whether that separation was wanted, so do not treat it as a fault.
- YieldA quart of milk with eight eggs is far too much for one pie -- expect enough filling for two 9-inch shells, or one deep dish with some left over. The second recipe, on a pint of milk, fills a single 9-inch pie.
- The second recipe's methodNo procedure is given at all. Slake the cornstarch in a little of the cold milk, scald the rest, combine with the sugar, orange juice and zest, then temper in the beaten eggs before pouring into the shell.
Orange pies belong to the same family as lemon and "chess" pies: a citrus-sharpened custard set in pastry, popular in American households from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Both recipes here are contributions signed only with initials, as was the norm in dozens of community compilations, which is why two versions of one dish can sit side by side with no attempt to reconcile them. The cracker crumbs in the first are worth noting: crushed crackers were a standard thickener and extender in this period.