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Cocoanut Cream Pie
1 heaping T cornstarch ½ C granulated sugar 3 eggs Clara Osborne. 1/2 C shredded cocoanut 1/2 t lemon juice or extract Powdered sugar Scald milk in double boiler. Mix cornstarch and sugar and stir into milk. Then set where it will just simmer. Beat 1 egg and 2 egg yolks and add. Also add cocoanut after the mixture begins to thicken. Turn into baked pie crust and cover with meringue made from the reserved egg whites beaten with 2 T powdered sugar. 1 heaping T butter
A cornstarch custard pie of the church-supper type, written in the compressed shorthand these community books favored — the ingredient list has absorbed the contributor's name and lost at least one quantity.
- The missing milkNo quantity of milk is given, though the method calls for scalding it. A pie of this size wants about 2 cups; that is a reconstruction, not what the original says.
- Reading the abbreviationsT is tablespoon, t teaspoon, C cup. The method never says what to do with the "1 heaping T butter"; most likely it belongs with the custard, stirred in off the heat at the end, where it would enrich and smooth the filling.
- The hinge: keep it below a boilA cornstarch-and-egg custard set over direct heat or allowed to boil after the yolks go in will curdle and weep into the crust. The double boiler and the instruction to "just simmer" are the whole technique.
- Temper the eggsThe recipe says only to beat the whole egg with two yolks and add. Whisk a ladle of the hot thickened milk into them first, then return the lot to the pan, or you will get scrambled threads.
- CocoanutPackaged shredded coconut of the period was often sold unsweetened and fairly dry. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will push an already sweet filling further; unsweetened is likely closer to the original, and 1½ cups sugar can be cut toward 1 cup without harming the set.
- Baking the meringueThe original stops at "cover with meringue," assuming the cook knows the rest. Spread it so it touches the crust edge all around and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until the peaks color. Two tablespoons of sugar for two whites is a soft, old-fashioned meringue that will not hold long.
- Blind-baked shellThe crust goes in fully baked and cooled. A warm shell steams under hot custard and turns soft.
- Yield and keepingProbably one 9-inch pie, six to eight servings, though the original specifies no tin size. Cut it the day it is made — meringue-topped custard pies bead and slump in the refrigerator overnight.
Cornstarch made this pie possible for ordinary households. Commercial cornstarch became widely available in America from the middle of the nineteenth century, and it let cooks thicken a custard firmly enough to slice without relying on a large number of eggs — a real economy in a farm-town kitchen. Shredded coconut arrived by the same industrial route: by the 1890s desiccated coconut was sold packaged and dry, and it turns up in church cookbooks of the following decades, in pies, cakes and puddings, as a modest touch of the exotic that kept well in the pantry. However the milk came to be left out of this recipe — a contributor's omission of a step she thought obvious, or simply a slip in printing or transcription — the page as printed does not tell us.