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Orange Butter Pie
8 ounces of sugar. 8 ounces of best fresh butter. 9 eggs. 2 oranges. Grate the rinds and squeeze the juice of the oranges into the sugar in a deep saucepan, put in the butter and then the eggs slightly beaten. Set the mixture over the fire and stir it till it becomes thick and ropy, like melted cheese. It may lessen the trouble, and danger of burning on the bottom to set it in a large saucepan containing boiling water. When done beat the mixture with an egg whisk a few minutes. The cooking of this mixture causes it to remain light and thick and rounded in the pies or tarts after baking, instead of falling and becoming waxy as it otherwise would do. Bake in a very slow oven or with a pan on the shelf above to ward off the heat.
This is an orange curd used as a pie filling, precooked so it sets high instead of sinking. The instructions are sound; only the units, the oven language and the doneness cue need translating.
- The hinge: cook it firstThe whole point of the recipe is that the eggs, butter, sugar and juice are brought to a set before they go into the shell. Skip it and you get a shallow, dense, weeping tart, exactly as the text warns.
- Weights8 ounces sugar is a generous cup; 8 ounces butter is two US sticks. These are weights, not fluid ounces — use a scale.
- EggsEggs of the period were often smaller than today's large grade, so eight large eggs (about 400 g out of shell) is a reasonable match for the original nine. Whole eggs are intended, not yolks only.
- "Thick and ropy, like melted cheese"That is a curd at roughly 170–175°F. Keep it below 180°F or the eggs scramble and the butter breaks out. The bain-marie the author suggests is the reliable route; a wide pan over low direct heat works if you stir constantly.
- Strain and whiskPass the hot curd through a sieve to catch cooked albumen and any coarse zest, then whisk as directed — the beating lightens it and helps it hold its dome.
- "A very slow oven"Roughly 250-275F by the usual period tables. The precooked filling only needs to set and take a faint colour, some 20-30 minutes, though the recipe does not say whether the shell is pre-baked. The pan on the upper shelf is a period substitute for a baking sheet or foil shield.
- ZestGrate only the coloured outer rind; pith taken up with it turns the curd bitter. Two medium oranges give roughly 2 tablespoons zest and 1/2 to 2/3 cup juice.
- YieldEnough for two 9-inch tarts or about a dozen small ones. The filling keeps a week refrigerated if you would rather bake in batches.
Orange curd of this kind sits in a long English line of "buttered" citrus mixtures -- lemon and orange butters cooked over water and eaten from a jar, spooned into pastry, or served in glasses -- which appear in cookery books before the term "lemon curd" settled into common use in the nineteenth century. What is notable about this version is the reasoning attached to it: the author explains the mechanism, that a set custard bakes tall while a raw one falls and turns waxy, rather than simply issuing steps. Explanation of that kind is common in trade pastry manuals, written for bakeshop hands who needed pies that held their look through the day, and who worked with ovens whose heat was managed by shelf position and an interposed pan rather than by a dial.