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Chocolate Cream Pie
3 squares chocolate 1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar I oz. (1 heaping tablespoonful) cornstarch 3 eggs Pinch salt 3/4 pint (1½ cups) milk ½ teaspoonful lemon extract ½ teaspoonful vanilla extract Some pie crust Bake a pie crust in a fireproof pie-plate. Grate the chocolate into a casserole, stir in the sugar, cornstarch, yolks of eggs, salt, and milk. Cook till thick, the milk. Let it cook slowly, with the lid on, until all the milk is absorbed by the rice. Now add the chopped dates, chopped peel, chopped suet, sugar, and nutmeg, mix well, and add the eggs well beaten.
Pour into a buttered earthenware dish, cover with the lid, and steam steadily for one and a half hours.
The page as printed is damaged: partway through "Cook till thick, the milk." the text jumps into an entirely different recipe — a steamed rice-and-date pudding from elsewhere in the pudding section. Everything from "Let it cook slowly, with the lid on" onward belongs to that other dish, not to this pie.
- The missing endingThe chocolate filling would have been cooked until thick and poured into the baked shell; since only the yolks are called for, the three whites were most likely meant for a meringue to be browned on top, though the page does not say so. Work from a current chocolate cream pie method for the final step.
- "Casserole" means saucepanHere the casserole is plainly a lidded pot used over the heat rather than a baking dish, though this page alone cannot settle how the term is used throughout the book. Cook the custard in a heavy saucepan over low heat, or in a double boiler if you distrust your stove.
- Squares of chocolateThree squares means 3 oz of unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in the same 1 oz squares today. Grating it, as directed, helps it melt evenly into the cold milk mixture.
- The weightsHalf a pound of sugar is nearer 1 1/8 cups by modern measure than the 1 cup the book claims; 1 oz of cornstarch is closer to 3 or 3 1/2 level tablespoons than one heaping one. Trust the volume figures in parentheses for a soft-set filling, the weights for a firmer slice.
- Milk3/4 pint is 1 1/2 cups, correct as given. This is a lean custard for the amount of thickener, so it sets stiff — whole milk gives the best texture.
- Cooking the custardWhisk constantly and take it just past the first bubble, then hold it a further minute so the cornstarch loses its raw taste. Egg yolks and cornstarch both need that brief boil, but a hard boil will curdle the yolks.
- FlavouringsA teaspoon and a half each of lemon and vanilla extract reads as a lot of lemon to a modern palate. Add them off the heat, after thickening, or the alcohol carries the aroma away.
- Blind-bakingThe "fireproof pie-plate" is simply an ovenproof one. Bake the shell fully — 400F until dry and coloured — since the filling goes in cooked and only the meringue returns to the oven, at 350F for 12-15 minutes.
- YieldEnough for one 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Chill at least four hours before cutting.
Chocolate cream pie belongs to the family of cornstarch-thickened "cream" pies that spread through American and British household cookery once cheap cornstarch and boxed baking chocolate became pantry staples in the later nineteenth century — a custard that could be cooked on the stove and spooned into a pre-baked shell, rather than baked in it. Its appearance in a book about casserole dishes is a reminder of what that word originally meant: a pot that went on the fire, so a stirred custard was squarely casserole work. Whatever its cause — damage, a compositor's slip, or a fault in reproduction — a splice is visible here, where this pie runs headlong into a steamed suet-and-date pudding.