Sugar Pie
Three cupfuls light brown sugar, one-half cupful melted butter, one-half cupful cream, three eggs. Season with lemon; beat well together; bake in pastry, without tops.--Mrs. J. F. G.
A two-line custard formula of the kind that assumed the cook already knew how a pie behaves in an oven. Everything unstated is here.
- YieldThree cups of sugar with three eggs and a half cup of cream makes a large amount of filling — the recipe's plural "tops" suggests more than one pie was intended, and it will likely fill two shallow shells or one deep dish. Overfilling a single standard pie plate risks a pie that weeps and cracks.
- Oven, since none is givenStart at 425F for 10-12 minutes to set the crust edge, then drop to 325-350F for another 30-40 minutes. A steady moderate heat is what this needs; too hot and the eggs curdle into a grainy, watery custard.
- DonenessThe center should still wobble as a single mass when the pan is nudged — about 175F on a thermometer. It firms as it cools. A filling baked until fully set in the oven will be dry and split by the time it reaches the table.
- "Season with lemon"In nineteenth-century books this usually means grated rind, lemon extract, juice, or some combination. The grated zest of one lemon plus a tablespoon of juice suits three cups of sugar; the acid is doing real work against all that sweetness.
- Light brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was less uniformly refined than today's, with more molasses character. Modern light brown works; a mix of light brown with a spoonful of dark brown gets closer to the older flavor.
- Melted butterLet it cool to barely warm before it meets the eggs, or you will scramble them. Beat the eggs into the sugar first, then stream in the butter and cream.
- The crust"Bake in pastry, without tops" means an open-faced single crust. Partially blind-bake it — this is a wet filling with no flour or crumb to absorb moisture, and an unbaked shell will go soggy underneath.
- ServingVery sweet and very rich. Cut small, serve at room temperature or barely cool, with unsweetened whipped cream if you want it.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions credited to some two hundred and fifty women in Virginia and neighboring states, many of them signed with initials as this one is — a book assembled from the actual working knowledge of a region rather than written by a single author. Sugar pie belongs to the broad family of pantry desserts sometimes called desperation pies: sugar, eggs, butter, and dairy, with no fruit and nothing seasonal, made from what was always in the house. Its close relatives in American cookbooks are chess pie, which often adds cornmeal or vinegar, and transparent pie; the type is traditionally traced to English custard and cheeseless "cheesecake" tarts, though that line of descent is a received account rather than a documented one. The proportions here — three cups of sugar to three eggs — say something about both the falling price of sugar by the 1870s, when it had become an everyday staple rather than a luxury, and about a period palate considerably sweeter than the modern one.