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Chocolate Pie
3/4 C sugar 1 1/2 C milk Pinch of salt 1 heaping T cocoa Vanilla Cook egg, sugar, milk and cocoa until it comes to a boil. Add 1T cornstarch softened in water; add vanilla. Use egg whites for frosting. Mrs. Nellie Ray.
A church-supper chocolate cream pie recorded in the shorthand of a cook who assumed everyone knew the proportions. The ingredient list has been clipped in transmission and the quantities for egg, sugar and milk are simply absent, so this is a set of instructions rather than a complete formula.
- Missing quantitiesOnly the salt, cocoa and cornstarch are specified. Comparable chocolate pie fillings in community cookbooks of this vintage run to about 2 cups milk, 2 egg yolks and 2/3 to 3/4 cup sugar for a 9-inch shell; treat that as a reconstruction, not as what Mrs. Ray wrote.
- No crust in the recipeThis is filling only. It needs a pastry shell baked blind and cooled before the hot filling goes in, or the bottom will never crisp.
- One tablespoon of cornstarch is lightFor two cups of milk that gives a soft, spoonable cream rather than a filling that holds a cut slice. Two tablespoons is closer to modern expectations for a sliceable pie.
- Cook the starch outAdding the slurry at the boil is right, but keep it bubbling and stirring a full minute afterward. Starch that is only just thickened tastes chalky and can thin again as it cools.
- Egg handling"Cook egg, sugar, milk and cocoa" means the yolk goes in from the start. Whisk constantly over moderate heat; if the heat runs high the yolk scrambles before the mixture ever boils. A double boiler gives more control.
- A heaping tablespoon of cocoaMild by current taste, and the cocoa in a household kitchen of this period was more likely natural than Dutch-processed. Three tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa gives the depth most people now expect; Dutch cocoa is smoother and less acidic if you prefer it.
- The meringue"Use egg whites for frosting" means a soft meringue, whites beaten stiff with roughly 2 tablespoons sugar per white, spread to the crust edge over the still-warm filling and browned. About 12 to 15 minutes at 350F, or 8 to 10 at 400F for a darker top.
- YieldOn the reconstructed quantities above, one 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Chill at least three hours before cutting; a soft meringue tends to weep if the pie is held overnight.
Cornstarch cream pies became household staples once boxed cornstarch and tinned cocoa were cheap and reliably available in American grocery stores in the later nineteenth century, and the chocolate version is common in church and ladies'-aid fundraising cookbooks of the period. The terseness is characteristic of the genre: contributors were writing for neighbours who had watched each other cook, so the parts everyone knew went unwritten, which is exactly why so many of these recipes now arrive incomplete. The attribution to Mrs. Nellie Ray is doing work that a headnote would do today, vouching for the pie by naming the woman known for it.