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Custard Pie (Heat one quart good rich milk)
Heat one quart good rich milk in a tin-pan set in a skillet of hot water; take five eggs, four large table-spoons sugar, and a little salt, beat sugar and eggs a little, and pour in the milk; flavor to suit the taste and have oven hot when put in to bake. Then cook slowly so as not to boil, as that spoils it; test with a knife, when done it will not stick to blade. Without the crust, this makes a delicious baked custard. Bake in a deep tin -Mrs. C. B. Boody, Kirkhoven,
A plain baked custard filling, scalded first so it sets quickly and evenly. The whole recipe turns on temperature: the oven starts hot to set the pastry, then must come down before the eggs curdle.
- The hinge: hot, then not hotThe recipe gives no numbers; in a modern oven the instruction reads as a hot start, around 425F for about 10 minutes to set the bottom crust, then down to about 325F for a further 30 to 40 minutes. "Cook slowly so as not to boil" means the custard must never bubble; once it does, the proteins squeeze out water and the slice weeps.
- Quantities in modern termsOne quart is 4 cups milk; four tablespoons sugar is 1/4 cup level, nearer a third of a cup if the spoons are heaped as "large table-spoons" suggests -- restrained by current taste either way. Five eggs to a quart is a soft set, sliceable but tender; six gives a firmer wedge that cuts cleanly.
- The tin-pan in a skillet of waterThis is an improvised double boiler for scalding the milk. Bring it to about 180F, when steam rises and the surface shivers at the edges, not to a boil.
- Tempering"Pour in the milk" over beaten eggs means gradually, in a thin stream, whisking. Dumping hot milk into eggs all at once gives you strands of cooked egg that no amount of straining fully hides. Strain the mix anyway before filling..
- Flavoring"Flavor to suit the taste" in this period commonly meant grated nutmeg over the top, sometimes vanilla or a strip of lemon peel steeped in the milk. Add extract after the milk has cooled somewhat so it does not cook off.
- Soggy-bottom insuranceThe recipe gives no help here. Blind-bake the shell until dry and just coloring, then fill it while both shell and custard are still warm; the filling begins to set on contact rather than soaking in.
- DonenessThe knife test works, but pull the pie when the outer two inches are set and the center still wobbles as a single mass; it firms as it cools. An instant-read thermometer in the center should show 170 to 175F.
- The crustless versionFor the baked custard, set the dish in a pan of hot water in the oven at a moderate heat, around 325F; the water bath buffers the edges from direct heat.
- YieldOne quart of milk with the eggs fills one deep 9-inch pie generously, or two standard shells; eight servings. Chill before cutting.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the great wave of American community cookbooks in which recipes arrive signed and placed, and this one carries its contributor's name and town like a postmark. The dish itself is far older than the book: "custard" comes through Middle English crustade, a term for a tart with a crust, and the name eventually attached to the sweet egg-and-milk filling rather than the pastry around it. Custard pie was an economical dessert for households with milk and eggs on hand and little else in season, and versions of it turn up widely in nineteenth-century American collections, many of them, like this one, spending their words on heat control rather than ingredients. The instruction to note that the same mixture bakes as a plain custard without pastry reflects a practical habit of the period, one bowl of filling serving more than a single purpose.