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Cream Pie
2 T sugar 1/2 t vanilla 2 T butter If cream is used, less butter is required.
1 pt. fresh milk fresh milk Yolks 2 eggs 2 T flour. Cover with meringue made of the 2 egg whites beaten stiff and 2 T sugar. Brown in oven.
As printed, this entry is a fragment: the ingredient column and the method have collapsed into each other, and the custard base itself (milk, egg yolks, thickener) has dropped out entirely. What survives is enough to show what kind of pie was intended, and enough to work from if you already know how a cream pie goes together.
- What is missingThere is no milk, no egg yolks, no flour or cornstarch, and no crust in the surviving text, yet the meringue calls for "the 2 egg whites" — meaning two yolks were used above. A standard filling of this type is about 2 cups scalded milk, 2 yolks, and 2 tablespoons flour or cornstarch, cooked to a thick custard, then finished with the butter and vanilla listed here.
- T and tCapital T is a tablespoon, lowercase t a teaspoon. Abbreviations of this kind were not always set consistently in print, so read them against the sense of the dish rather than trusting the typesetter.
- "14 C cold water"Almost certainly 1/4 cup, the fraction bar having been lost in setting the type. A quarter cup is the usual amount for softening one tablespoon of granulated gelatine.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of loose granulated gelatine is roughly one modern envelope. Sprinkle it over the cold water and let it stand until it swells, then stir it into the hot custard off the heat so it dissolves without boiling; prolonged boiling can weaken its setting power.
- Cream instead of milkThe line "If cream is used, less butter is required" is the one piece of real cook's guidance in the fragment. With whole milk keep the 2 tablespoons of butter; with cream, one is plenty, and with heavy cream you can omit it.
- Browning the meringue"Brown in oven" means a hot oven for a short time rather than a long bake; the original gives no temperature. By modern practice that is around 400F for 8 to 10 minutes, or 350F for 12 to 15 if you want the meringue set further through. Watch it closely; the sugar can go from gold to scorched very quickly.
- Meringue proportionsTwo tablespoons of sugar to two whites is a lean meringue by modern standards, where 2 tablespoons per white is common. It will brown fast and weep more readily, so spread it so it seals to the crust edge all around.
- YieldThe quantities suit one 8- or 9-inch pie, eight modest slices. Being gelatine-set as well as custard-thickened, it wants several hours in the refrigerator before cutting.
Cream pie in American recipe collections often means much the same thing: a stirred custard poured into a baked shell and capped with meringue, a dish built from things a farm or small-town household had on hand every day. One suggestive detail is the gelatine. Granulated gelatine sold in packets became a cheap pantry staple in the last years of the nineteenth century, and it is often said that home cooks added a spoonful to custards and creams to guarantee a clean slice. Because gelatine remained common well into the twentieth century, it places the recipe no earlier than roughly the 1890s rather than fixing its date. Recipes of this kind were typically written from memory for other cooks who already knew the basic method. That habit may explain the state of this entry: the parts everyone knew were left out, and the parts worth remembering, such as cutting the butter when using cream, were written down.