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Boston Cream Pie
Place four ounces sugar in a copper basin with four eggs and half teaspoon vanilla essence, place basin on range, and sharply whisk for twelve minutes. Take from range and add four ounces sifted flour, gently mix with skimmer two minutes, add two ounces melted butter, lightly mix a minute more, drop preparation in a buttered deep pie plate and set in oven to bake twenty minutes. Remove, let cool off, split pie in half, crosswise, spread a creme patissiere on the split side of both half cakes, join, close again, dredge powdered sugar over and serve.
This is a Boston cream pie built the French way: a warm-whisked genoise rather than a butter cake, split and filled with pastry cream. The instructions assume a cook who already knows what a ribbon looks like.
- The hinge: the warm whiskEggs and sugar are beaten over heat so the foam holds air without the eggs scrambling; bring them to about 110-120F and whip until the batter falls from the whisk in a ribbon that sits on the surface for a few seconds. Twelve minutes is right for hand-whisking over direct heat; in a stand mixer, warm the bowl over simmering water first, then whip 5 to 8 minutes off the heat.
- Weights to volumesFour ounces sugar is a generous half cup; four ounces flour is a scant cup, spooned and levelled; two ounces butter is four tablespoons. Weigh if you can, since a genoise has no chemical leavening to cover an error.
- Copper basinUnlined copper is known to react with egg white in a way that stabilises a foam, though here the eggs are whole and warmed over the range, so the basin's even heat conduction is likely as much the point. A stainless bowl works; a scrupulously clean one with no trace of fat matters more than the metal.
- SkimmerA flat perforated spoon, used here as a folding tool. A large rubber spatula does the same job with less deflation. Fold flour and butter in quickly and stop the moment they disappear.
- Melted butterHave it warm but not hot, and pour it down the side of the bowl over a spread of batter rather than in a puddle, or it sinks and knocks the air out.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F; twenty minutes suits a 9-inch deep pie plate, and the cake is done when it springs back and the edges pull from the sides.
- The creme patissiereAssumed knowledge in this book. Make it in advance and chill it thoroughly, then beat it smooth before spreading. Warm pastry cream on a warm cake will soak the crumb and slump out of the join.
- No chocolateThe finish here is powdered sugar, and sugar-dusted versions appear in the earlier record; the poured chocolate glaze most people now expect seems to have become the expected dress later. Both are legitimate.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, eight modest slices. Best eaten the day it is filled, since a genoise stales fast.
Boston cream pie is a cake baked in a pie plate, and the name is often said to record a time when pie tins were the pan most kitchens owned; nineteenth-century American cookbooks are full of "pudding-cake pies" of this shape, split and filled with custard or jam. Its invention is traditionally credited to the Parker House hotel in Boston in the 1850s, a claim repeated far more often than it is documented. What is distinctive about this version is the hand it was written by: Alexander Filippini cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and he treats the American dessert as a French pastry chef would, building it on a warm-whisked genoise with creme patissiere between the layers rather than the butter cake and thickened custard of the domestic books. The powdered-sugar finish, rather than a chocolate glaze, is the older dress for the dish.