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Prune Pie
Stew, stone and mash enough prunes to make a cupful of pulp. Add a cup cream, yolks of three eggs, beaten, flavor with vanilla, add pinch of salt; bake in a rich under-crust as quickly as possible; beat the whites of the eggs with two tablespoons of sugar, spread over top, return to oven and brown very highly.
A single-crust custard pie thickened with prune pulp and egg yolk, finished with a meringue. The instructions assume the cook already knows how a custard behaves, so most of the modern work is in temperature control.
- The hinge: heat the crust hard, the custard gently"as quickly as possible" most likely points at setting the pastry before the wet filling soaks it, though the text does not say so outright. A modern approach: start at 425F for about 10 minutes, then drop to 325-350F until the centre is just barely wobbly, roughly 30-35 minutes. Held at high heat throughout, an egg-and-cream custard curdles and weeps.
- Blind-bake insteadModern practice gets a better result: line a 9-inch pan with the pastry, bake it blind at 400F until dry and pale gold, then pour in the filling and bake at 325F. This achieves what the original wanted without risking a scrambled custard.
- PrunesDried plums, now often labelled that way as well. Simmer pitted prunes in water to cover for 15-20 minutes, drain well and mash or puree, and measure out the cup of pulp called for; start with rather less than you think, as stewed prunes swell. "Stone" means pit them, which pre-pitted fruit spares you.
- Sugar in the fillingNone is specified, and prunes plus the meringue's two tablespoons make a pie that reads as only mildly sweet. Two to three tablespoons stirred into the custard is in keeping if you want it closer to a dessert pie.
- CreamUnmodified "cream" in older recipes could cover a wide range of fat contents, roughly from what we would call half-and-half up to heavy cream. Heavy cream will give a denser set; half-and-half is closer to a classic custard.
- "A rich under-crust"Rich means a high proportion of fat, not sweetened — an ordinary all-butter or lard shortcrust for a single 9-inch shell.
- The meringueThree whites with two tablespoons of sugar is a soft, old-style meringue that beads and weeps quickly. Spread it so it touches the crust all round and brown at 400F for 6-8 minutes rather than "very highly" under a scorching top heat, which sets the surface before the interior cooks.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no size; the quantity of filling suits a small pie, an 8- to 9-inch shell, giving perhaps six servings. Cool completely before cutting; a warm custard pie will not hold a slice.
Prune pie belongs to the large family of American dried-fruit pies that carried households through late winter, when apples were spent and nothing fresh had arrived. Prunes — plums dried whole — were cheap, kept indefinitely on the pantry shelf, and reconstituted into a pulp sweet enough to need little added sugar. The custard-and-meringue treatment here departs from a two-crust pie of stewed fruit: the prune is folded into a cream-and-yolk base, which is why the method reads so much like a custard recipe with fruit added.