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Custard Pie (Make a custard of two eggs)
Make a custard of two eggs, half a cup of sugar, a pint of milk, a little butter and flavoring. Make the paste in the usual way and put it in a round pie dish that will fit in the large compartment. Fill in the usual way and bake in the cooker with two radiators, one above the pie and the other below it.
This is a custard pie stripped to its essentials, written for a fireless cooker rather than an oven. The measurements are sound; the equipment is the part that no longer exists in most kitchens.
- RadiatorsIn a fireless cooker, a "radiator" is a soapstone or cast-iron disc heated on the range until very hot, then dropped into the insulated compartment above and below the food. There is no thermostat and no way to hold the heat steady, so the pie bakes on falling temperature.
- Oven equivalentIf you are working in a conventional oven, treat this as a moderate bake: 350F for the first 15 minutes to set the crust, then 325F until the custard is done. Custard baked hot curdles and weeps.
- Paste"Make the paste in the usual way" means a plain short pastry; a workable modern single crust is about 1 1/4 cups flour to 1/3 cup fat. "Fill in the usual way" appears to mean the shell is lined, the raw custard poured in, and the whole thing baked together.
- Soggy bottomThe hinge of any custard pie is getting the crust to set before the liquid soaks it. Blind bake the shell 10-12 minutes and brush the hot interior with a little beaten egg white before filling; the original recipe, written for gentle enclosed heat, does not warn you about this.
- QuantitiesA pint is 2 cups of milk to 2 eggs and 1/2 cup sugar, which is a soft, lightly set custard by modern standards. Three eggs to the pint gives a firmer slice that cuts cleanly.
- FlavoringThe recipe leaves this open; vanilla is the likeliest reading for an American book of this period, though lemon, almond or rosewater were also used. Grated nutmeg over the top before baking was a common finish for custard pie and is worth adding if you want it.
- DonenessPull the pie when the outer inch is set and the centre still trembles; it will finish on residual heat. An instant-read thermometer in the middle should show 175-180F. Past 185F the eggs tighten and the filling separates.
- YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pie, six modest slices. Cool completely before cutting, and refrigerate any that is left.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American households between roughly 1905 and the First World War: a heavily insulated wooden box with metal-lined wells, into which you lowered preheated soapstone discs and left the food to cook on stored heat. It saved fuel, kept the kitchen cool in summer, and let a cook leave the house, and manufacturers published pamphlets to prove that anything from a pot roast to a pie could be managed in one. A custard pie is a shrewd demonstration piece, since custard actually prefers the steady, falling, moist heat of a closed box to the dry blast of a coal range, where it curdles at the edges. The recipe's terseness assumes the reader already knew how to make a paste and needed only the part that was new to her.