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Chess Tart Filling
2 Tablespoons Melted Butter Substitute 3 Tablespoons Honey 1 Cupful Raisins 1/2 Cupful Nuts 3 Tablespoons Milk 2 Eggs Beaten Together Mix all and bake in a small greased pan until set. When cold put a spoonful on each tart.
Blanchard Evaporated Eggs A Few Facts About This Wonderful Product After careful selection the eggs used in Blanchard Evaporated Eggs are broken into individual glass cups, each egg being examined separately to insure that only individual glass cups , each egg being examined separately to insure that only prime eggs are admitted to our scientific evaporating apparatus where the water is removed and all the delicate qualities of the eggs are retained.
To prepare our Evaporated Eggs ready for use add the required amount of water and beat thoroughly with double egg beater until you have a smooth batter, and beat thoroughly with double egg beater until you have a smooth batter, exactly the same as if you had beaten eggs broken directly from the shell; use and care for it the way you are accustomed to, and you will never again be without a supply of Blanchard Evaporated Eggs at home, in camp or on a cruise.
A wartime-era chess filling: honey standing in for sugar, a butter substitute for butter, and dried eggs for fresh. It is baked as a slab in a shallow pan, cooled, then spooned into ready-made tart shells rather than baked inside them.
- The hinge: bake it separately, cool it, then fillUnusually for a chess filling, this is not poured into pastry. It sets in a greased pan, is cooled until firm, and is spooned onto baked tart shells. Chill it thoroughly or the spoonfuls will slump.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. An egg-and-milk mixture of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, and is done when the centre no longer wobbles - roughly 170F internally. Hotter and it curdles and weeps.
- Pan sizeThe recipe says only "a small greased pan." Something like an 8-inch square gives a layer around half an inch deep, which should set in roughly 20-30 minutes; a narrower pan such as a loaf tin will give a deeper layer that takes longer and is more likely to break.
- Butter substituteIn this period that means margarine, oleo, or a vegetable shortening, adopted because butter was scarce and expensive. Two tablespoons of melted butter is the straightforward modern reading.
- Evaporated eggsThe advertisement tacked onto the page is for dried whole egg, reconstituted with water. If you are following the recipe as printed, two fresh eggs is what is meant; dried egg powders vary too much between brands for a single conversion to be reliable.
- Honey as the only sweetenerThree tablespoons of honey for a cup of raisins is restrained by chess-pie standards - the filling is barely sweet, leaning on the fruit. Honey also browns faster than sugar, so watch the surface.
- Raisins and nutsChop both. Whole raisins and halved nuts make a mixture that will not spoon neatly onto a small tart, and the nuts should be tasted first - walnuts and pecans from an open jar go rancid quickly.
- YieldSomething in the region of two cups of filling, enough for a dozen or so small tart shells at a spoonful each.
Chess pie is a Southern American sweet, a plain custard of eggs, sugar and butter thickened with a little meal or flour, and the origin of the name is disputed rather than documented - it is variously said to come from "chest" pie (a pie that kept well in a pie chest), from a cook's mumbled "jes' pie", or from English cheese-curd tarts. This version has been pushed around by circumstance: honey instead of sugar, a substitute instead of butter, and the option of dried eggs all point to a household economising on staples that were scarce or dear, though the recipe itself gives no date. The Blanchard advertisement printed beneath the recipe is typical of bride's and community cookbooks of the era, where the text was set continuously and the sponsor's copy ran straight on from the last instruction.