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Chocolate Cream Pie
2 squares Lowney's Premium Chocolate or ½ cup of Lowney's Cocoa 4 cup cornstarch 2 cups milk 2 egg whites cup sugar 3 egg yolks teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon vanilla Melt two squares Lowney's Chocolate or one half cup sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks, salt Lowney's Cocoa, add and milk. Cook i stantly; flavor with shell, cover with a r Able boiler till thick, stirring connilla. Pour into a baked piecrust ingue made by beating egg whites till stiff and adding two tablespoons sugar; brown in oven and serve cold. See colored illustration, Plate VIII.
A standard cornstarch-thickened chocolate cream pie of the early twentieth century, built in a double boiler and topped with a soft meringue. A few of the quantities in the printed text have lost their fractions, so use judgment where noted.
- The chocolateLowney's Premium was unsweetened baking chocolate in 1-ounce squares, so two squares is 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate. The half cup of cocoa given as an alternative is unsweetened cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate or a modern cocoa mix.
- Ambiguous amountsThe sugar, cornstarch and salt have all lost their fractions in the printed line. For a filling of this type with 2 cups milk, expect roughly 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar for unsweetened chocolate, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.
- VanillaA full tablespoon is heavy by current taste, and it is added off the heat in any case. One to two teaspoons suits most palates; add it after the filling comes off the stove so the flavor is not driven off.
- Double boiler"Able boiler" is the tail of "double boiler." Cook over simmering, not boiling, water and stir constantly until the mixture is thick enough to coat a spoon heavily. Cornstarch needs to reach a near-boil to lose its raw taste and set fully, which takes patience over indirect heat.
- The yolksWhisk a ladle of the hot milk mixture into the beaten yolks before returning them to the pan. The original assumes the cook knows this; skipping it in a double boiler is usually survivable but gives a grainy filling.
- The crustThe shell is baked before filling, and is best cooled first, though the text says only "baked piecrust." No temperature is given in the original; as a modern working figure, blind-bake at about 425F for 12 to 15 minutes with weights, then 5 to 10 minutes uncovered until dry and colored.
- MeringueTwo whites beaten stiff with two tablespoons sugar make a thin soft meringue. Spread it so it touches the crust edge all around. The original says only "brown in oven"; a moderate to hot oven for roughly 8 to 15 minutes, depending on how set you want it, will do.
- ServingThe quantities suit one 8- or 9-inch shell; no pan size or yield is given in the original. "Serve cold" means fully chilled -- the filling will not slice cleanly warm, and a meringue-topped pie weeps if held more than a day.
Lowney's Cook Book came out of the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate and cocoa manufacturer that, like Baker's and Hershey, published recipe collections in the early 1900s partly as advertising; the compilation is generally attributed to Maria Willett Howard. The reference to a colored illustration on Plate VIII may well have been part of that pitch, since full-color plates were expensive and arguably signaled a book worth keeping on the shelf. The pie itself belongs to a family of cornstarch "cream" fillings that spread rapidly once boxed cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple, letting a home cook get a sliceable custard without the fuss of a baked one. The instruction to use either squares or cocoa reflects the company's interest in selling both.