Butterscotch Pie: or, Putting the "sweet" in sweets

You can learn about people from their recipes, including how much they spent on sugar.

Butterscotch Pie 1½ cups light brown sugar (or ¾ cup each white and dark brown sugar) 1½ cups water 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons cornstarch 2 tablespoons white sugar 2 egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue) ⅛ tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla 1 baked pie shell*        Meringue: 2 egg whites ¼ cup sugar ¼ tsp cream of tartar In a small saucepan, bring the brown sugar and water to a boil, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, sift the flour, cornstarch, and white sugar into a medium saucepan. Have the egg yolks ready in a medium or large heatproof mixing bowl. When the sugar boils, pour it slowly over the sifted ingredients, whisking hard as you go. Beat for another minute or so to eliminate any lumps. Then cook over medium heat until it thickens, stirring constantly. When the sugar mixture is thick, start whisking the egg yolks very hard. Continue whisking while you slowly pour in about one-third to half of the pie filling. Pour it back into the saucepan and cook 1 minute longer, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the butter. When the butter is completely melted and mixed in, add the vanilla. Allow to cool completely. When ready to bake, heat oven to 325°. Pour the pie filling into the crust and bake until it jiggles but does not slosh, about 40-50 minutes. Then remove from the oven and set aside while making the meringue. Meringue: Beat the egg whites until frothy. Then add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff. (Ideally, the egg whites will form peaks almost but don't quite hold a stiff point.) Then sprinkle in the sugar a little at a time. Each time you add a little sugar, keep beating until it dissolves before adding a little more. Spread this onto the pie (no need to let the pie cool) and return it to the oven. Bake until it is browned, about 10 minutes. *If you are making your own pie shell, bake it until it is crisp, but don't let it darken. Source: Handwritten manuscript (1930s or 1940s)

Today, we are once again cracking open my great-grandmother's binder, which has a lot of desserts in it. None of them are of the "mildly sweet" type. As we have learned, these people REALLY liked sugar. Also, I shared this recipe with a friend who said "MORE butterscotch???"

On a side note, I love how her handwriting on this page starts out prim and perfect, and gets more scrawly as she realizes she's running out of space.

Also, I love how she apparently cut a pie recipe out of an actual book (and not just some pamphlet) and discarded the rest of it.

Even though I never met my great-grandmother, she intimidates me with her ruler-straight margins. She wrote this recipe is as rectangular as a printed newspaper column. I showed the page to a friend of mine, and he flinched in terror. It's nice to know that my forebears can scare people from beyond the grave.

I printed the recipe out so I didn't need to worry about getting splats on fragile ancient irreplaceable paper. And so, with her original directions propped up next to the stove, it  was time pour out a lot of sugar and make a pie. 

I've made a few custard pies like this that never seem to set. But this recipe has eggs, flour, and cornstarch in it. If it stays gloppy, it's because the universe itself took my pie away from me.

I didn't see the point of sifting our dry ingredients, but  my grandmother's cursive intimidated me into it. I dared not disobey someone whose handwriting can make people flinch at seven paces. Besides, I have a dishwasher at hand for all the little bowls that were already piling up.

I know it looks like I just dropped a mound of powder onto the counter, but it's in a clear glass bowl.

As we set the first saucepan onto the stove, it looked like we were making the icing for Louise Bennett Weaver's spice cake.

While we waited for the sugar to boil, I thought about how I would finish the recipe. I had originally planned to pour the boiling syrup into the bowl where the "white ingredients" waited. Then, after returning everything to the pot, I would put our egg yolks into the same bowl to wait for tempering. Then I realized I could just put the "white ingredients" in a second saucepan and transfer everything over. (If you're confused, so was I until I reread the original recipe like five times.)

In order to prevent hardened flour curds, I furiously whisked everything while I poured in the syrup. The resulting suds on top made it impossible for me to see if I had any escapee flour lumps.

I should have felt bad about thrashing a whisk in a nonstick pot, but this one is flimsy and cheap. It already has a few spots where the teflon has scratched away, revealing not metal but rust. The sooner this pot is truly ruined, the sooner I can repurpose it as a novelty planter.

Moving on with the recipe, we are directed to "add slightly beaten egg. Cook one minute longer." I'm assuming she didn't write about tempering the egg yolks because this was a personal notebook and not a copy meant for other people. Or perhaps tempering eggs was just as obvious then as discarding eggshells is now. 

 

After giving the filling precisely one more minute on the stove, it was amazingly creamy and ready to receive a lot of butter. When it came to the vanilla, I decided to follow my heart (and the advice of a lot of people who commented about the velvet cookies): use a lot more than one teaspoon. I then tasted the filling and stopped worrying about whether the pie would set. Even if it failed in the oven, it would be amazing on pancakes. It's nice to know that even if a recipe fails, it won't go to waste.

It was time to let the it cool off completely. I took the opportunity to take a lovely long walk in a futile attempt to counteract all the pie I would be eating. It was a lovely evening. 

I had expected the pie filling to be firm when I got back to the house, but it was just as sloshy as when I took it off the stove. As I let the spoon sink into the goop, I worried that I had somehow already ruined the pie. Then I reminded myself that this adventure would either end in butterscotch pie or butterscotch pancakes, but either way the pie filling wasn't going down the drain. 

I had thought I would smear the meringue on top and then brown it. But when I read the directions, it says to "bake in cooked pie shell" and THEN put the meringue on top. This is why it's nice to finally have a working printer in the house! It prevents skipping over important steps when copying directions.

In the absence of any cooking time or doneness test, I decided to let the pie bake until it didn't slosh anymore. Given all the flour and cornstarch in this pie, you'd think it would have turned into butterscotch clay in like two minutes. However, it spent a long time in the oven, during which time the crust slowly burned and the pie stayed as gloppy as ever. The amazing smells took over the kitchen like they were teasing me for my impending failure. Eventually, the pie stopped wobbling and also developed a sort of crispy-looking top layer.

As I pulled the pie out of the oven, I deeply regretted making it with others in the house. I couldn't secretly fling it into the trash it was as bad as I suspected. After baking it for so long, I had no idea if I had little bitty curds of scrambled egg floating in it, if it was burnt from top to bottom, or if it was otherwise bad.

Since the pie was finally baked, it was time to put something white and fluffy on top. I have no idea what the baking powder is doing in the meringue, but she wrote it down and I can't argue without a ouija board. Does baking powder make a difference in meringues? Or does it just fizzle away with nothing to raise?

I also don't know why we're supposed to fold in the sugar. Usually you gradually add it while you're still beating. Does that method only work with electric mixers (or at least a handcranked eggbeater)? But again, that's what she wrote down, so there must be a purpose. I folded in the sugar as carefully as possible, but it took the stiffness out of the meringue. It later occurred to me that I should have used powdered sugar, but by then I was already wiping the countertops.

The meringue puffed up really nicely in the oven. I didn't know if it would deflate as it cooled, but it looked really cute. Let the record show that at least for a brief moment, it was really puffy.

The next day, the meringue was flatter than when I spooned it onto the pie, and showed every grain of sugar that I had folded into it.

I almost couldn't believe it when I cut into this pie, but it was an actual pie and not a gloopy mess. You could lift out slices and everything.

Sure, it was a little bit soft, but it didn't flop, drip, or ooze. Besides, did I really want yet another sharp-cornered pie? Everything in life is a balance-- including pies. We don't want them to drip everywhere, but sometimes our pies can be a little too well-set. Lest we forget:

Getting back to today's recipe: this pie was really good, but it is also really sweet. I mean, it's basically a pie crust full of syrup. I'd like to pretend that this means that just one sliver of pie will do, but it has an addictively good taste and a perfect butterscotch flavor. We didn't have a chance to find out what kind of shelf life it has. If I were to remake this (and I probably will), I would probably make little mini-pies instead of one big one. This seems like it'd be better that way.