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Custard Pie
For one deep pie allow two eggs; one-half teaspoon of salt; one-half cup of sugar; one-half teaspoon of cinnamon; one pint (large measure) of milk. Place the sugar, salt and spice in a quart cup, stir well together, then add the beaten eggs and sufficient milk to fill the quart measure. Bake for fortyfive minutes, inserting a silver knife to determine if it is quite cooked. There should be not enough heat to cause the custard to boil, for this will make it appear watery; the oven should, in fact, be a little more moderate than for most pies.
A plain baked custard pie of the simplest kind, with the whole method resting on one point: heat low enough that the egg sets without curdling. The original assumes you already have a pastry shell and know how to line a plate.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no figure, only that the oven should be "a little more moderate than for most pies." In modern terms that points to something in the region of 325F; at the hotter settings usual for pastry a custard will curdle and weep.
- The quart cupThis is a 4-cup graduated measure, used here as a mixing vessel so the liquid can be topped up to a fixed volume. "One pint (large measure)" means a generous pint; in practice you simply add milk until the whole mixture reaches the quart line, so the final quantity is set by the measure rather than by the pint.
- The crust is assumedNo shell is specified; the recipe takes it for granted that you have a lined plate ready. A single deep bottom crust is what is wanted, and blind-baking it until dry and just coloured before filling keeps the wet custard from soaking the base.
- Testing for donenessInsert the knife an inch or two from the centre rather than dead centre. The custard should still wobble slightly in the middle when the pie comes out; residual heat finishes it. A knife that comes out clean at the exact centre means it has gone a little too far.
- Watery custardThe warning about boiling is the hinge of the recipe. Once egg protein passes roughly 185F it contracts and squeezes out liquid, so the filling separates into curd and whey. Forty-five minutes is right only at a genuinely moderate heat.
- Salt and spiceHalf a teaspoon of salt in a single pie reads high by modern habit; a quarter teaspoon suits most palates. Cinnamon is unusual here — American custard pie is far more often nutmeg, grated over the surface before baking.
- MilkWhole milk gives the intended texture. Scalding it first, then cooling slightly before adding the eggs, shortens the bake and helps the custard set evenly, though the recipe does not require it.
- YieldOne deep pie, six to eight slices. Cool to room temperature before cutting; a warm custard pie slices raggedly.
Custard pie belongs to a family of egg-and-milk tarts that reach back to medieval European cookery, where the name is generally traced to Middle English crustade, a term for a pastry case together with its set filling. By the time The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, it was one of the cheapest pies a household could make: two eggs, a pint of milk, sugar and a spice, with no fruit, no cream and nothing out of season. Its appearance in a pattern company's cookbook is telling, since Butterick is often said to have been selling competence to women furnishing their first kitchens, and a custard pie is a small test of oven management rather than of ingredients. The insistence on a cooler oven reflects the real difficulty of the period, when a coal or wood range gave no dial and a cook judged heat by hand, flour scorch or the behaviour of a scrap of paper.