Home › Pastry, Pies and Tarts › Pineapple Pie
Pineapple Pie
Slice of butter and a cup of sugar beat to a cream; add yolks of four eggs well beaten; then add a small can of grated pineapple. Last of all add the whites of two eggs well beaten and enough milk to suit taste. Line a deep pie plate with a rich crust. Put in custard and bake.
When done beat the whites of two eggs, spread over top and brown.
A custard pie with a meringue lid, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what a custard should look like. Two things need pinning down: the fat and the liquid, both of which the original leaves to judgment.
- "Slice of butter"An unmeasured cut off the household block. Around 2 tablespoons suits a pie of this size; much more than 3 tablespoons risks a greasy rather than a richer custard.
- Milk "to suit taste"This is the genuinely ambiguous measure. For a deep 9-inch shell, the filling wants roughly 1 cup of milk; less gives a dense, sliceable curd, more gives a loose custard that weeps under the meringue.
- Canned pineapple, not freshA "small can" of the era was probably somewhere in the 8-to-10-ounce range. Use canned or otherwise cooked fruit, as the original specifies. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests egg protein and can leave you with a filling that never sets.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. A workable modern approach: start the lined shell hot, around 425F, for 10-15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 325-350F for the custard so it does not curdle or crack.
- Knowing when the custard is doneThe edges should be set and the centre still wobble like loose jelly; an instant-read thermometer at the middle should show about 170-175F. Carryover heat finishes it, and an overbaked custard will separate and puddle.
- The meringueTwo whites will carry a 9-inch pie if you beat in about 4 tablespoons of sugar, a tablespoon at a time, to firm glossy peaks. Spread it onto the filling while the pie is still warm and seal it right to the crust edge, or it will shrink and weep.
- Browning"Brown" means 10-12 minutes at 350F for a firm meringue, or 3-5 minutes at 425F for a paler, softer one. The hotter route colours faster but is more prone to beading.
- YieldOne deep pie plate, around 9 inches, eight slices. Chill before cutting; a custard pie sliced warm will not hold its shape.
Pineapple pie belongs to the canned-goods moment in American home cooking. Commercial canning of Hawaiian pineapple expanded rapidly around the turn of the twentieth century, and grated pineapple in tins put a tropical fruit within reach of households that would never see a fresh one, at a price that suited an everyday pie. The structure here is much older than the filling: a stirred egg-and-sugar custard baked in a rich crust and crowned with meringue is the same template as lemon or coconut pie, with the fashionable ingredient swapped in. The vagueness about butter and milk is characteristic too, the printed recipe serving as a reminder rather than a set of instructions.