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Sour Cream Prune Pie
1 1/2 cups sour cream 1 cup prunes (soaked in warm water 3 hours) 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 cup sugar 4 egg yolks, slightly beaten Pit prunes after soaking. Mix ingredients together, pour into an uncooked pastry shell and bake in a slow oven. Cover with meringue. Serves 6.
A custard pie of the sour-cream-and-dried-fruit family, written for cooks who knew what a slow oven felt like and needed no timings. The gaps worth filling are temperature, doneness and the meringue.
- Slow oven"Slow" in this period usually means somewhere around 300-325F, and the lower end of that suits a custard: hotter and the eggs curdle into a weeping, grainy filling. Expect roughly 50 to 65 minutes with an unbaked shell, but judge by set rather than clock.
- Judging donenessThe filling is set when the outer two inches are firm and the centre still wobbles as one piece; it finishes setting as it cools. An instant-read thermometer in the middle should show about 175F.
- Soggy bottomA wet custard poured into raw pastry at 300F is the classic recipe for an underbaked base. Blind-baking the shell for 15 minutes at 400F, then cooling it before filling, solves the problem the original ignores.
- The prunesToday's pitted prunes are sold semi-moist and need nothing like three hours; 20 to 30 minutes in hot water plumps them. Drain well and chop, or the extra liquid loosens the custard.
- Sour creamUse full-fat cultured sour cream rather than light or reduced-fat, which are often thickened with starches or gums that can behave oddly in a baked custard. Creme fraiche, being higher in fat, is a workable substitute and tends to hold together well.
- The meringueThe recipe gives no meringue ingredients, but four whites are left over from the yolks and are the obvious candidate: beat with about half a cup of sugar to stiff, glossy peaks. Spread over the hot filling, sealing to the crust edge, and brown for 10 to 12 minutes at 350F.
- ServingSix portions, as stated; the quantity of filling suits a 9-inch shell, though the recipe does not say. Cool at room temperature for two hours before cutting; refrigerate any leftovers, though the meringue will begin to weep by the next day.
Sour cream pies filled with dried fruit -- prunes, raisins, dried apples -- belong to the thrift baking associated with northern and central European settlers in America, and appear under names like Pennsylvania Dutch sour cream raisin pie; in German-Russian communities of the plains a sour cream raisin pie is often remembered as a funeral and church-supper dish. The logic is a winter one: cream that had soured on its own, fruit dried the previous summer, eggs, sugar and spice, with no fresh fruit required. A rich egg-and-dairy dessert would sit comfortably in a meatless menu, where abstinence from meat rather than vegetarian conviction was often the organising principle.