Silver Pie
Peel and grate one large white potato. Add the juice and grated rind of a lemon, the beaten white of one egg, one cupful of white sugar, and one of cold water.
Bake in a nice paste. After baking, spread on top the whites of three eggs, frothed, sweetened and flavored with lemon. Set again on the fire and brown. Lay on small pieces of jelly or jam, just before taking it to the table.--Mrs.
A raw-potato lemon pie of the sort 19th-century cooks called a mock or economy pie. It works, but the filling is much looser than a modern custard and the method assumes an unbaked shell finished in a hot oven.
- The hinge: grate the potato fine and work fastThe starch in the raw potato does most of the thickening, with some help from the single beaten egg white, so use a starchy variety (a russet) and grate it on the fine side of the grater directly into the lemon juice. Grated potato browns within minutes on contact with air; the acid holds the colour.
- "A nice paste" means the pastryPaste is pie crust. Line a 9-inch plate with a plain short crust; the filling is thin enough that a partially blind-baked shell (10 minutes at 400F with weights) gives a much better base than a raw one.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Start at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 350F and bake until the filling is just set and no longer sloshes in the centre, roughly 30 to 40 minutes more.
- "Set again on the fire and brown"This means back into the oven, not onto the stovetop. A meringue of three whites browns in 10 to 12 minutes at 350F, or 4 to 5 minutes at 400F if you want a darker crown with a softer interior.
- The meringue proportionsThree whites want about 6 tablespoons of sugar, beaten in a spoonful at a time after soft peaks form. Spread it so it touches the crust all the way round, which keeps it from shrinking back and weeping.
- One cupful of water is a lotWith a single large potato and one egg white, the filling sets soft and sliceable at best. If your potato is on the small side, hold back a few tablespoons of the water rather than trusting the full cup.
- The jellySmall dabs of jelly or jam, laid on just before the pie goes to the table as the recipe directs, presumably for colour against the white meringue. Put them on cold and at the last moment; on a warm pie they melt and run.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Best eaten the day it is made, since the potato filling weeps as it stands.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why so many recipes trail off into "--Mrs." and a surname. Silver pie belongs to a large 19th-century family of mock lemon pies, in which a cheap bulk ingredient carries the flavour of an expensive imported one: grated potato here, soda crackers in mock apple pie, vinegar in vinegar pie. The name is generally taken to be a straightforward description of the colour, white filling under white meringue. Recipes like this one are usually read as evidence of postwar Southern thrift, though it may be fairer to call it an old economy dish that a straitened household had good reason to keep.