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Custard Pie
Roll out on the corner of a table a quarter pound pie paste to half inch wider than the pie plate. Lightly butter a deep pie plate, lay the paste over, press it down with the thumbs all around the edge, trim off any superfluous paste and with the aid of pincers pinch all around the border. Line the inside of the paste with a sheet of white paper, fill up with dried white beans, egg the board all around and set in the oven for fifteen minutes. Remove to a table. Carefully crack four fresh eggs into a bowl, add four ounces sugar, one teaspoon vanilla essence, three-quarters of a pint cold milk and two gills cold cream; thoroughly beat up with a whisk for two minutes. Remove the beans and paper from the pie plate and wipe the inside of the plate. Then press the preparation through a cheesecloth into the pie plate. Set in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve either hot or cold.
A plain baked custard in a blind-baked shell. The instructions are terse in the way professional books of the period were; the two things that need translating are the liquid measures and the oven, which is never named at all.
- The measuresA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is 1 cup. Three-quarters of a pint of milk is 1 1/2 cups. Four ounces of sugar is about 1/2 cup plus a tablespoon by weight; four eggs to 2 1/2 cups of dairy is a soft, loose set.
- A quarter pound of pasteFour ounces of pastry is enough for a single crust on a 9-inch plate rolled thin. If your plate is deep, weigh out closer to 6 ounces so the sides do not stretch and slump.
- "Egg the board"Most likely the border: brush the rim of the pastry with beaten egg before it goes in. It sets the crimped edge and gives it colour.
- Blind baking temperatureThe book gives none. Fifteen minutes with paper and beans wants a hot oven, 400-425F, and the shell should be dry and pale gold, not raw, when the beans come out.
- Lower the oven for the custardThis is the hinge. An egg custard baked at pastry heat curdles and weeps. Drop to 325F before the filling goes in, and expect 35 to 45 minutes rather than twenty.
- Judging the setPull the pie when the outer inch is firm and the centre still trembles as a single mass. It carries on cooking on the bench; a custard baked until the middle is solid will have split by the time it is cold.
- StrainingPressing the mixture through cheesecloth catches chalazae and any unbroken white. A fine sieve does the same job faster. Skim the foam off the surface afterwards or it bakes into a mottled skin.
- YieldThe recipe does not give a plate size; the quantities suit roughly a 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. The powdered sugar is best sifted over just before serving; on a hot pie it dissolves within a few minutes.
Custard baked in pastry is one of the oldest sweet dishes in the English and French repertoires; the medieval crustade is generally traced to the crust itself, which began as a container rather than something to eat. By the turn of the twentieth century the dish had settled into much this form: a blind-baked shell, eggs beaten with sugar and milk, a little vanilla. The method here suggests a professional hand -- the dried beans and paper, the pincers for crimping, the egg wash on the border, the straining through cheesecloth are all restaurant habits, aimed at a shell that will not go soggy and a filling with no thread of white in it. The instruction to serve the pie hot or cold is worth noting.