Mrs. Tingee's Costard Pie

Ingredients

• much pie paste
• four eggs
• about a pint of milk
• four ounces of sugar

Method

1. 1

   Prepare a deep pie pan.

2. 2

   Mix the eggs, milk, and sugar together.

3. 3

   Pour the mixture into the pie paste.

4. 4

   Bake until set and the top is golden.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Cooking for profit (1886) by Jessup Whitehead, page 174. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Wrs. Tingse's Costard Pie. The glory of the custard pie, is in the depth or thickness of it. The distance should be great between the glossy surface SAN FRANCISCO HOTEL GAZETTE'S wavering between orange, yelbw and brown and the substratum, wafer-like in its thinness, of paste. The custard pie, then demands a pie pan of an uncommon depth and spaciousness, with a capacity not frittered away in broad and spreading edges but, rather, with boundaries of an upright character and quite unobtrusive, the necessary wall of crust being of no great moment, so that it be respectably short as all about a custard pie that is worthy of consideration relates only to the filling. Taking this view of the cus- tard pie, which I believe is the popular one. I have been troubled about pie pans. We have none at this place but such as are shallow, almost flat, nothing that IS a cross between pie plate and pud- ding pan, which is what the exigency de- mands. Thinking to get out of the dilem- ma easily enough I went over to the country store and explained the matter to the merchant, who would not even stop for me to finish before he went off nod- ding and smiling, saying he had just what I wanted, some pie plates that were deep and some that were deeper. There never was a man more mistaken in the use of words. All he really had was some that were shallow and some others that were shallower, and I spent some time trying to prove it to him, but as he was German it seemed without much success. Then I had to come home, take a hammer and beat the broad, flat, edges of the pie plates we have into a comparative per- pendicularity. They look bad but, *'what can't be cured must be endured," — as the sailor said when he bade his sweetheart, good bye — "so fareweU, Susan," etc. The very last time 1 had a talk with Mrs. Tingee — we are opposite neighbor's and it is common for me to step in of a morning — just as I was as X thought well out of ttie house she stopped me on the steps with the usual, "Oh, tell me some- thing, now, what can I have for dinner?', "Why; Mrs. Tingee, why don't you give your boarders some roast iamb? There is nothing better ; and as for the price it is really no dearer now than mutton or the other meat you buy." But, wouldn't they eat — " Whatever she may have in- tended to say, she did not linish the sentence but stopped for a moment and then resumed ; "No; it is not much trouble about the meat part, but it is the something to come after. I ought to make them something. Day before yesterday I gave them pud- ding; yesterday we had nothing and it seems as though I ought to have some- thing to-day, and it ought to be pie and, oh, I do dread to make pie, so!' I could plainly see a shiver ran all through the poor lady as she said this; probably she was thinking of lard and the outlay involved in its use. "Why not make a custard pie," I said, "it does not require much pie paste.' "I should want some eggs, shouldn"t I?" she asked dubiouslv.^ "Yes; perhaps four.' "Couldn't you make it with two, if it was you?" "How can I tell when I don't know how much or how many you are going to make.'*' She gazed away off into space for a while. There was a mighty argument for and against pie going on in her mind. Then coming close and looking around to see that there were no listeners, she said in a low tone : "I would not say it to anybody but you, but I have one boarder, a young man, that actually sometimes eats four pieces of pie.?" So that's what made this poor woman shiver. Not the bare reflection upon the expensiveness of lard, but the dread of this young man's calling heartlessly one^ two, three, four times for pie; having her in his power; knowing she dared not say no, or, "it is all out," while the other boarders were, yet to be served and would presently be, right before his eyes. I think if he had been in my place and real- ized what depths of doubt and fear this likelihood of his wanting four pieces had opened before her he would have sworn oif from ever going beyond the second order. However, there are extenuating, circumstances to be mentioned in his favor. We fellows who make our custard piea in all that swaggering, arrogant feeling of boundless wealth that is born of having a plethroic store-room and whole barrels full of "stuff" to use out of would feel more like pitying than blaming the young man who would essay to movt around after a four-piece in-vest-mtwi of our pies, however good and wholesome, for, as we fill each one to the brim witui a i.int of milk, four eggs

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.