Cream Pie II
Make as Cream Pie I, using French Cream Filling in place of Cream Filling.
A one-line variation that depends entirely on two other entries in the book, so the practical work is in reading it correctly. Note that this sits in the Cake chapter, not Pastry.
- It is not a pieIn this book a "cream pie" is a plain butter cake, baked in layers and filled — close to what is now called Boston cream pie. The name is usually explained by the shallow pie plates such cakes were baked in, though that is a traditional explanation rather than a documented one; two 8-inch cake pans will do the same job.
- Find the two parent recipes firstYou need Cream Pie I for the cake and proportions, and French Cream Filling from the fillings section. Neither quantity nor method is repeated here, and the filling is the only thing that changes.
- What French cream filling meansRead the book's own French Cream Filling entry; in cookbooks of this period the "French" version is often a cooked custard enriched with extra yolk, sometimes with whipped cream folded in once cold. If it is made that way it will be softer than the plain cream filling.
- OvenNeither temperature nor time is given here; both come from Cream Pie I. In a modern oven, layers of this kind bake at about 350–375F; test with a skewer at the centre rather than trusting a clock.
- Cool everything completelyThe hinge of the whole thing. Warm cake melts the filling and warm custard collapses folded cream. Both must be at room temperature or below before assembly.
- Cook the starch outA flour- or cornstarch-thickened custard must come to a full boil for a minute or two, stirring, or it tastes pasty and thins again on standing. Then chill it with a surface of plastic wrap or buttered paper to stop a skin forming.
- StorageA cake filled with egg custard and whipped cream is a refrigerator item and best eaten the day it is made; a modern kitchen should not leave it out for hours.
- YieldNot stated here; it is whatever Cream Pie I gives.
Boston cream pie is the dish this entry belongs to, and its odd name is usually explained as a record of pan rather than pastry: early American cooks baked shallow cakes in the pie tins they already owned. Filled cakes of this sort appear in New England print from the middle of the nineteenth century, and the version thickened with a boiled custard is often credited to Boston's Parker House hotel, a traditional attribution rather than a documented one. The book treats the whole family systematically — a base cake, then numbered variations distinguished only by their filling — teaching one procedure and then varying a single component.