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Cream Pie (Beat thoroughly together)
Beat thoroughly together the white of one egg, half tea-cup sugar, and table-spoon of flour; then add tea-cup rich milk (some use part cream), bake with a bottom crust, and grate nutmeg on top. -Mrs. Luther Liggett.
A single-crust custard pie of the thriftiest kind: one egg white, a spoonful of flour and a cup of milk. It works, but the proportions are so lean that the details matter.
- The teacupA teacup in American cookbooks of this period is usually reckoned at around 3/4 cup rather than the modern 8-ounce measuring cup, though the vessels varied. On that reckoning, roughly 6 tablespoons sugar and 3/4 cup milk. The filling is thin either way.
- Pan sizeThis is a small quantity, enough for one shallow 7- to 8-inch pie plate in a very thin layer, or a few tartlet shells. Spread over a modern 9-inch deep dish it will be too shallow to set as a custard.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake as you would any custard pie: 350F until the center is just set with a slight wobble, roughly 25 to 35 minutes at this depth. Higher heat curdles the milk and weeps.
- Blind-bake the shellWith so little filling and so short a bake, an unbaked bottom crust will stay pale and soggy. Partially bake the shell first, then pour in the filling.
- Beat, then addBeating the white with the sugar and flour before the milk goes in helps disperse the flour without lumps, which may be why the order is written this way. The recipe says only 'beat thoroughly'; it does not specify whether the white should be foamed.
- Rich milk'Rich milk' meant milk with the cream not skimmed off, richer than much of what was sold, and the recipe offers part cream as an option some cooks took. Using part cream will give a firmer, fuller-tasting set.
- NutmegCustard pies of the period were commonly grated over before baking, though the wording here follows the baking, so either reading is possible. 'Grate' implies whole nutmeg on a rasp; pre-ground is noticeably duller.
The Dixie Cook Book (1883) belongs to the era of the compiled community cookbook, where hundreds of contributions arrived over signatures like Mrs. Luther Liggett's and were printed more or less as received. That may account for both the brevity and the oddity of this one: a cream pie built on a single egg white. Recipes calling for whites alone are often supposed to pair with a recipe elsewhere that wanted only yolks, but that is an inference rather than anything this book states. "Cream pie" in this period frequently means a baked custard in a crust rather than the chilled, blind-baked, pudding-filled pie of later American diners, and grated nutmeg is a common finish.