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Potato Pie (Boil either Irish or sweet)
Boil either Irish or sweet potatoes until well done, mash and rub through a sieve; to a pint of pulp, add three pints sweet milk, table-spoon melted butter, tea-cup sugar, three eggs, pinch of salt, and nutmeg or lemon to flavor. Use rich paste for under crust.- Mrs. R. C. Carson, Harrisburg.
A plain contributor's custard pie in the older style, written for a cook who already knew what a pie looked like coming out of the oven. The proportions are generous and the oven is left entirely to your judgment.
- The hinge: this is a custard, not a mashA pint of pulp to three pints of milk makes a thin, pourable batter; the eggs and the starch in the pulp share the work of setting it. Bake only until the outer inch is firm and the center still trembles; carryover heat finishes it, and an over-baked potato custard weeps and cracks.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Standard practice for a custard in a raw shell is a hot start of about 425F for 15 minutes to set the pastry, then down to 325-350F for 35-45 minutes to cook the filling gently.
- YieldThree pints of milk plus a pint of pulp comes to about two quarts of filling: enough for two to three 9-inch pies, or two deep ones. Halve or third the recipe unless you are baking for a crowd.
- "Sweet milk"Plain fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that shared a nineteenth-century pantry. Whole milk is the right substitute; the custard is already lean and skim will not set well.
- TeacupPeriod teacup equivalents vary, generally reckoned somewhere between a gill (4 fl oz) and a full cup, so read the sugar as roughly 3/4 cup. Cup measures were not standardized when this was written, and the amount is forgiving in either direction.
- Three eggs is fewThree eggs to three pints of milk is a soft set by modern standards, and period eggs were smaller than today's large. If you scale the recipe down, keep the eggs proportionally generous rather than lean or the slices will not stand.
- Rub through a sieveNot optional. Mashed potato holds lumps and strings that never disperse in milk; a drum sieve, food mill or ricer gives the smooth pulp the recipe assumes. A blender will make Irish potato gluey, so avoid it for the white version.
- "Rich paste" and a wet fillingRich paste means a short crust with a high proportion of butter or lard. With this much liquid going into a raw shell, partially blind-bake the bottom and brush it with egg white before filling, or the base will steam rather than crisp.
- Lemon to flavorMost likely grated peel or lemon extract rather than juice; much juice risks curdling the milk before the custard sets.
Potato pie of this kind is a dessert custard, thickened with starchy pulp and sweetened like a pumpkin pie. That the recipe treats Irish and sweet potatoes as interchangeable is telling: the sweet potato version is the one that survived as a Southern fixture, though white potato custard pies also appear in the record, a way of turning cheap starch and a little sugar into something that ate like a rich dish. The Dixie Cook Book ran on donated recipes credited by name and town, and Mrs. Carson of Harrisburg wrote for readers who needed the proportions and nothing else, which is why no oven temperature, no pan size and no baking time appear in the recipe.