Date Refrigerator Pie: It is so good

Today, we are making a recipe my great-grandmother didn't clip and should have.

Date Refrigerator Pie 2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin, or 2 (¼-oz) packets 1 tablespoon cold water 2 tablespoons sugar 2 egg yolks ½ cup lemon juice (2 medium-sized lemons) 1 cup orange juice (fresh squeezed if possible) ½ cup milk ⅓ cup sugar 1 cup whipping cream ⅔ cup chopped dates ⅔ cup halved dates 1 orange, segmented 1 baked pie shell, or 1 graham cracker crumb crust (baked if desired) If you made your own graham cracker crust and didn't bake it, put it in the freezer so it doesn't fall apart when you fill the pie. Put the gelatin in a small bowl. Add the water and stir quickly so it mixes before the gelatin soaks it up and hardens. (This is easier to stir with a toothpick or skewer than a spoon.) Set aside and let stand. In the top of a double boiler, whisk together the two tablespoons sugar and the egg yolks. When thoroughly combined, whisk in the fruit juices. Cook over boiling water until slightly thickened. (It's not going to thicken very much.) Remove from heat. In a small cup or bowl, scald the milk by microwaving it until it simmers. Then drop in the gelatin and stir until melted. (This is easier to stir with a table knife than a spoon. With a spoon, the gelatin gets stuck in the bowl-end.) Slowly pour the milk into the yolks while stirring vigorously. Let cool to room temperature. Then stir in the chopped dates. Cut the orange segments and date halves into bite-size pieces. Whip the cream and fold it in. Pour into the pie shell. Arrange on the top alternate circles of date halves and orange segments. Refrigerate until firm. Source: Chicago Tribune; April 17, 1936

Some readers may recall that when we made wilted lettuce, we had to write to the Chicago Public Library for help reading the newspaper clipping. (An unfortunately-placed ink smudge had blotted out part of the ingredient list.) Instead of sending me the wilted lettuce on its own, they sent me all of the Chicago Tribune's recipes for that day. This pie looked too good to pass up.

Chicago Tribune, 17 April 1936, with thanks to the Chicago Public Library

This pie fits perfectly with our ongoing series of recipes that don't heat up the kitchen (or at least, things that don't heat the kitchen very much). Granted, we will have to get out a double boiler, but that's the only heat unless you bake a pie crust. We did graham crackers instead.

I know baking the crust would make it nice and toasty, but I didn't want to turn on the oven.

Today's adventure begins with pie insurance, which some people know as "unflavored gelatin." I occasionally slip a discreet envelope of the stuff into pies that are too gloppy to slice. Its presence on the ingredient list made the whole recipe feel more reassuring. 

So, before we get to the dates and fresh oranges, we soften our gelatin in--- hold on a minute. Usually when you soften gelatin, you sprinkle it in enough water to easily dissolve, like this:

But this recipe has us soften our gelatin in barely enough water to make it wet. Was tap water scarce in the Depression? (And with the maddening buildout of enough AI datacenters to use an entire Texas' worth of energy, will it be scarce again?)

It occurred to me: was the Turkish paste supposed to turn into a rubbery clod like this?

Having gotten the rest of our ingredients together, I was surprised at how yellow this pie was shaping up to be. It looked downright pretty.

 

After getting over the stove, our egg yolk mixture didn't firm up very much (if at all). I even got out a meat thermometer to see if how close it was to scrambling and therefore if I could get away with cooking it any longer. 

But its persistent runniness didn't surprise me. Egg yolk custards never seem to set as well as when you use the whole egg. Besides, we had gelatin on standby. I've already said this today, but a box of unflavored gelatin is like food insurance.

Next, it was time to add our dates, which had turned into a sticky mass in the measuring cup. I have to ask: were dates that much cheaper back then? Today they're one of the pricer items on the dried fruit shelf, but in the 1930s you see them as often as raisins. Granted, I splurged a bit on really good dates from the upscale grocery store. But even the prepackaged dates you can get at most supermarkets aren't cheap these days. 

The whipped cream turned this into a cute-looking fluff. I think that as Lace Maker pointed out in the comments under our underwhelming pineapple Bavarian, you could call this a "date Bavarian" if you put it in a gelatin mold instead of a pie shell.

As I discovered when dressing the top of the pie, it's surprisingly tricky to make concentric rings of garnish in a six-inch pan. There's simply no space. (In retrospect, I should have started from the rim instead of the center.) But I told myself it passed for a lovely freehand mosaic anyway and put our pie in the fridge for the night.

This was every bit as good as I thought it would be. The fresh oranges on top were a perfect counterpoint to the rich pie beneath. And the dates were great little sweet interspersions through the pie's tartness. It's one of those desserts where you can get away with serving small slices without disappointing most people. It's just the right amount of rich.

All that fuss with cardboard circles, lifting-handles, and plastic wrap paid off. We got the pie out in one piece. The graham cracker crust didn't even try to crumble.

This turned out to be one of those recipes where you spend a lot of time prepping your ingredients, but it flies together once everything is ready. It also tasted so good I almost regretted halving it. I do think it was worth juicing my own oranges and lemons-- they're a big part of the flavor. 

However, it is one of those recipes that really depends on good ingredients. The dates should be flavorful enough to eat right out of the package. The oranges should smell like oranges before you even cut them. (Really, most fruit should smell like fruit before you cut into it. If it smells like nothing, it'll taste like nothing.) But when the fruits are right, this pie is a wonderful way to serve them.

Lemon Pie no. 2: It's always time for lemon pie

I can't imagine needing two lemon pie recipes.

Lemon Pie #2 3 egg yolks Juice and rind of 1 lemon 3 tablespoons flour 1 cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon butter 1 9-inch pie shell Heat oven to 350°. Bake the pie shell until slightly golden. Whip the egg yolks and lemon juice until very light, set aside. Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt into a saucepan. Whisk in boiling water until smooth. Add the lemon rind and stir over medium-high heat until it thickens and comes to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the butter and the egg yolks, stirring until the butter melts. Pour into the pie shell and bake until set, about 25-30 minutes. If desired, top with meringue and return to the oven until lightly browned. I thought this was better with whipped cream instead. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated, depending on preference. Meringue: Beat 3 egg whites (which you saved from separating the egg yolks for the filling) with an electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Continue beating while gradually sprinkling in 5 tablespoons of sugar. Beat until the sugar is dissolved and everything is smooth and glossy. Spread on the pie, return to the oven, and bake until the meringue is lightly browned. Handwritten note, probably 1930s-1950s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

We may have found why my great-grandmother occasionally needed "a pleasant change from a piece of lemon meringue pie." I can't imagine making lemon pie so often that I needed a second recipe for it.

I was going to skip over this recipe. We already made a lemon pie from her book and liked a lot. Why would anyone need multiple lemon pies? But then again, I have multiple brownie recipes for different moods (the extra-rich brownies, the very sweet brownies, the quick and easy brownies, etc). 

With that in mind, if there is any real variation in lemon pies, I've never found it. They always taste like the recipe on the back of the cornstarch box, whether I make them myself or buy them at the fanciest bakeries my budget can forgive. This pie looked a bit different, which made me wonder: are there other lemon pies and I've been missing out all this time?

Furthermore, I can't imagine why someone would write down a second recipe for the same pie unless it was better than the first.

And lastly, my car battery died and I wanted to bake my way out of being despondent. I didn't mourn the car battery, but I was forced to confront the insane prices of car parts amidst a trade war and an actual war. (Nothing has trickled down to my neighborhood yet.) Lemon pie it would therefore be. 

Three tablespoons of flour didn't seem like much until I got it into the sifter.

I hadn't made this pie yet, and I already liked it more than the one that shows up on the back of the cornstarch box. That one never seems to set unless I burn an offering to Fornax (the Roman goddess of hearth and oven), and even then I sometimes end up euphemistically calling it custard.This one uses a lot more to hold it together.

Let the record show that because we semi-always follow directions here at A Book of Cookrye, I did in fact get out the sifter for this. It seemed like more bother than I'd usually do for a lemon pie, but I'm not the one who wrote this down. 

As directed, I stirred in boiling water "until smooth," which was a lot easier than I expected. I thought I'd have to thrash this with a whisk, but we were done in a few seconds.

I did this in a separate bowl because I actually like my nonstick pot now.

The recipe doesn't mention using the lemon rind, but I think it really makes the flavor pop. I'm going to assume people would have done that instead of throwing out ingredients that were right on the countertop and waiting. Maybe cooks back then thought adding the rind was too obvious to write down, like "discard the eggshells."

This particular recipe calls for egg yolks "beaten light," which I've never seen in a lemon pie before. Usually you just put everything in the top of a double boiler and stir it for a minute or two. I put the whisk attachment into our mixer to see what the point of this might be. Seeing a single whisk (they were too cheap to put two in the box) hovering over the food made me think of when I replaced my broken handmixer with a power drill (which at the time led to several unsolicited and unculinary wall perforations).

I thought that one lemon wasn't enough for a whole pie, so I bought two. (Perhaps my great-grandmother meant a large lemon, rather than the smaller ones?) But a generously-dipped tasting spoon showed me that the first lemon was more than enough for the pie, so I put the other one away for future plans.

We are next told to add the butter and whipped egg yolks right to the pot. There's no mention of slowly spooning hot filling into the egg yolks until they're tempered. I was in a bit of a mood, so I decided to see if I really needed to bother with that. Maybe whipping them changes something and thus forestalls egg drop soup?

 

To my surprise, this actually worked. Nothing got scrambled, and we had a few swirls of foam that floated on top of the pot. I had thought they'd completely deflate and mix in. Perhaps this is like one of those sponge puddings that bake in layers? (Also, I really should have slipped in some artificial dye. This would have been really cute if it was pink.)

I decided not to make a meringue because they only last a day or so before deflating and dripping out those little brown beads. (Remember the rice pudding?) I do like a good meringue, but I also like desserts that last a bit.

However, this pie was incomplete without some sort of white fluff on top. I always thought people just did the meringue for presentation, but lemon pie is a lot better when dressed. So I gave it a dollop of whipped cream.

 

I didn't think a single lemon would be enough for a whole pie, but you'll notice that this is a relatively shallow pie so it all worked out. It was really good. More so than the other pie, this one tasted like fresh lemon. It's easy to make and hard to give away. If you don't want to make a whole pie of it, this would make really good lemon squares if you bake it on a shortbread cookie crust. Or, imagine it in a pavlova or a blitz forte.

Cranberry Meringue Pie

When you make the crust, you should put a pie in it.

Cranberry Meringue Pie 1¾ cups granulated sugar ¾ cup cold water 4 cups cranberries 2 tbsp flour 4 eggs, separated ¼ teaspoon salt 2 tbsp butter 1 teaspoon vanilla 4 tablespoons powdered sugar 1 baked deep-dish pie shell In a large saucepan, cook the sugar and water until thick and syrupy. Add cranberries. Cook, stirring constantly, until they stop popping. Then remove from heat and let cool for five to ten minutes. In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt and yolks of the eggs until smooth. With a fork (or a mini whisk if you have one), gradually beat in three tablespoons of the juice of the cooked cranberries (don't worry if a few berries get in there), beating out any lumps. If the mixture is too thick to easily stir into the rest of the pie filling, beat in more juice one spoonful at a time. Then add it to the pot of berries and simmer for three minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and vanilla. Set aside to cool. When ready to bake, heat oven to 325°. Turn the filling into the pie shell. Beat the egg whites until frothy. Then add the powdered sugar one spoonful at a time, beating until each one is dissolved before adding the next. Spread on top of the pie and bake about 15 minutes. Note: If you cut the recipe to three-quarters (that is: go from four eggs to three, and adjust the other ingredients to match), this recipe will fit very nicely in a normal, non-deep-dish pie pan. Miss Hanna Katz, Apartment 49B, Sylvania Gardens, 48th Street and Osage Avenue, Philadelphia; Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange; November 8, 1935; page 14

While I was purchasing frozen fruit, I saw cranberries semi-hidden on one of the lower shelves. This is the first time I've seen them outside of a can except for those few short weeks when they take over half the fruit section.

Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange; November 8, 1935; page 4

As often happens with cranberry recipes, we start with a lot of sugar.

Next, we get to our featured ingredient: cranberries! After I measured them out, a small handful remained in the bag. Since I don't want to let nearly-empty packages of frozen this-and-thats pile up in the freezer, I dumped the rest of the berries into the pot. There's nothing wrong with a heaping fruit pie. 

A quick digression: The newspaper gave Miss Hanna Katz's address as an intersection, which is a very Philadelphia way of doing it. Since most of the city is a grid, people often say "Oh, the museum's on 33rd and South" instead of "It's at 3260 South Street." In case that gives her too much privacy for a newspaper-famous cook, they also printed her apartment number. I can only guess that you were supposed to send her a postcard (it's cheaper than letters) if you made the pie and liked it. By the way, the museum on 33rd and South is the Penn Archeological Museum. I used to love going there to see the glassware from ancient Rome.

Anyway, getting back to Miss Katz's pie. We're supposed to cook the cranberries until they stop popping. I didn't know if they still pop after getting frozen, but I figured we would get a pie out of them either way. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear whether the cranberries had started popping, much less when they stopped. You see, cranberries don't make a loud noise like popcorn. Instead, they pop with a soft pft... pft.... And the oven drowned out the noise.

The fan in the oven that cools the circuit boards has been making that horrible noise for a few months now, and none of use want to take the oven out of the wall and fix it. Does anyone in a house ever get around to all the problems waiting to be dealt with? If you've ever cleared the to-do list, how did it feel and how long did it last?

Since I couldn't listen for the sound of popping, I turned off the burner when the cranberries looked like they had all split open. This was close as we could get to following the directions.

We had a few little clumps of floury egg yolk that I didn't manage to whisk away, but I figured that the pie would be just fine anyway. Besides, I don't think anyone sending recipes to the newspaper in the middle of the Depression would fault me for choosing not to throw this out and start over.

At first I thought Miss Katz was bonkers for simmering this with egg in it. Wouldn't that just turn our pie filling into cranberry-flavored egg drop soup? I told myself that she got this printed in the newspaper with her name and apartment number under the title. Surely she wouldn't have risked people knocking on her door with complaints. Still, I was surprised when this actually worked. If you disregard the lumps that never went away, our pie filling was so pretty you'd think it came from a can.

When I tried a sample spoonful, it was about as sweet as cranberry juice from the bottle. The excess of sugar was not in fact an excess. I won't say you should never doubt someone who got their recipe published, but it is worth pausing to ask if you're sure you know better.

Just I thought our pie was ready to bake, I realized I had forgotten the last two ingredients:

I'm not sure what the butter does in recipes like this. It's not like a couple of spoonfuls will dramatically change the flavor or anything. But I figured the butter must be there for a reason. So I carefully scooped the pie filling back out of the crust (most of it, anyway) and added what I forgot.

Having gotten our complete pie ready to bake, we only needed to put the meringue on top. When I tried a spoonful, it was a bit blander than I thought. I nearly added more sugar before thinking "Don't we have enough in the pie already?"

I expected to have a hard time covering the pie since we made a lot less meringue than what Miss Katz thought we should. But this recipe still made a lot of meringue. I imagine that if you make the full recipe, you'd have one of those extra-puffy meringues that's taller than the rest of the pie.

When we lifted out a slice, it actually lifted out.

I thought this would taste more or less like cranberry sauce in a pie pan, but somehow it had an extra richness to it. (Maybe this is why we added butter and eggs.) It wasn't excessively sweet (small mountain of sugar notwithstanding). But if the sight of so much sugar in a saucepan makes you quake, you could tip a fair amount of it back into the bag before you missed it. 

However, if you're not economizing like it's 1935, I think this would be fantastic if you skipped the meringue and served it with ice cream.

Typewritten Pie Crust: or, Every pie is a journey

My perfect pies are always a bit small.

Flaky Pie Crust 1 cup flour ¼ teaspoon salt 6 tablespoons butter or shortening (or a mix of both) about 3 to 4 tablespoons ice-cold water Have the butter soft enough work with, but still cold enough to be firm. Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Cut in the butter with a metal spatula until it is roughly in pea-size pieces. Gradually add enough water to make a stiff dough, cutting and turning the dough as before to mix it together. Put in a sealed container (a ziploc bag will do) and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. (In colder weather, you can rest it on the countertop unless your kitchen is very warm.) Roll out on a well-floured surface until it is big enough to cover a 9-inch pie pan. Dust flour on top of the dough so it doesn't stick to the rolling pin. If it doesn't come out right the first time, fold the dough up (instead of pressing or wadding it into a ball) and reroll it. Folding the dough helps keep it from becoming tough or sticky when you roll it again. To transfer the crust to the pie pan, fold it loosely into quarters. (You want your folds to make a + sign in the dough-- so don't fold it lengthwise twice like you're folding up a letter.) Place it in the pan, with the corner in the center of the pan. Then unfold it and let it lay into place. Or, roll the dough around the rolling pin. Then hold the rolling pin over the edge of the pie pan and unroll the crust over it. If your recipe calls for a pre-baked pie crust, prick it a few times with a fork. Then bake at 400° for about 15 minutes, or until it's golden. Check on it about halfway through the baking time to see if it's rising up in the pan. If it does, pierce the bubbles with a fork and then press them back down. Source: Typewritten clipping, unknown date Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

I couldn't help wondering why my great-grandmother pasted this typewritten pie crust recipe next to two newspaper articles about the same thing. How many pie crusts can one person need?

In case you want to cook like it's 1940s Chicago, her entire recipe binder is here!

Maybe my great-grandmother never got a pie to turn out right and kept adding articles to the collage in the hopes that the next one would finally solve her problems. Or, she might have used bits and parts of the directions from each.

As much as the "perfect pie" clipping in her notebook has changed my baking (almost as much as Delia Smith's tutorial video), my "perfect" crusts are always a bit small. I have to slightly stretch the dough to make it cover the whole pan. It's nice to avoid waste, but I don't want holes under my pies either.

So, I decided to try out the typewritten recipe on the same page. After all, she must have saved it for a reason. Maybe she was like "This. This is the one that always comes out right." 

The directions read like a condensed version of the big newspaper article on the same page. (You know, the one that I learned so much from.) You might follow the newspaper clipping if you've never done this before, but then you would use the short instructions on the typewritten version when you only needed a quick reminder. However, the ingredient amounts are slightly different. I couldn't help wondering if it comes out ever-so-slightly better (and will make pie with the flimsiest of excuses). 

Since this recipe gives us a time and temperature for baking it empty (none of the others do), I picked out a pie that calls for a baked shell just to try it out. (Also I was in the mood for pie.) Also, the other recipes on the page are long newspaper articles with detailed paragraphs. This is just a typewritten slip. Sometimes the most unassuming-looking recipes are the best ones. 

Just in case it matters, I got out the sifter. When we follow directions, we are free to blame the original writer.

The ingredients call for shortening, but I used butter instead. As we have noted previously, shortening makes for crumbly pie dough that is irksome to work with. I told myself that I was probably still following the directions anyway. A lot of older recipes use the word shortening to mean "any solid fat." You often see things like "butter or other shortening" or "dripping, lard, or other shortening" in the ingredient list (if there is one). Or one might find notes like "any other shortening may be substituted for the oleo" in the directions.

I hate that no one (besides Delia Smith, of course) ever says to let the dough rest before getting out a rolling pin. None of the pasted-down pie clippings on my great-grandmother's oversize page doesn't mention it. Maybe it's one of those steps that was too obvious to write at the time, just like no recipe today ever says "discard the eggshells." Frustration aside, it makes me wonder what else no one wrote down that makes their recipes so hard to follow today.

After letting the pie crust rest (seriously, always let the dough sit for at least 30 minutes. It's one of those wonderful times when you can make things better by sitting down), it rolled out into a nearly round shape. I took it as a sign that I had done something right.

It was now time to get this into the pan. Our recipe says to "pat and roll out to fit 9-inch pie pan." As it happens, today's pie pan has "9 INCH" molded into its underside so we know we're following the directions. (As with all our pie pans, I don't know where this one came from.)  

Incidentally, after many pies where I wrapped the crust around the rolling pin and then unrolled it over the pan, I've found it so much easier to (loosely!) fold the dough into quarters, put it into the pan with the dough-corner in the center, and then unfold it.

This crust covered the pan without having to roll it as thin as tissue paper. We even had a few extra offcuts, though not enough to make an extra small turnover for myself. But most crucially, the crust fit the pan size that it claims.

The recipe tells us to "flute or crimp edge; perforate crust with fork." We actually managed to flute almost all the way around the pan (there were a few thin spots). 

 

I then pricked it with a fork even though I usually don't bother with that. In my experience, fork-pricking doesn't make any difference. Instead, it's best to follow Delia's advice and just check the oven about halfway through the time. As she says, "And if you find it starts to rise up a bit-- have a look about halfway through! And just sort of slap it down again or prick it again with a fork. It'll be perfectly all right." Well, I looked in the oven about halfway through the time and our crust definitely needed to be slapped down.

On the bright side, we knew our creation would live up to its typewritten title: "Flaky pie crust." However, almost all of our lovely fluting disappeared in the oven. But if we look at a section that didn't sag, you can see the lovely layers that awaited the upcoming pie.

Because my completionist streak attacks me at the most inconvenient times, I was going to make a pie at some later date using this last article:

But then I looked at the ingredient amounts (½ cup shortening, 1½ cups flour) and realized that we've been inadvertently following this one ever since I used the directions from Mrs. George O. Thurn's book. She writes the same recipe, doubled: 

A Book of Selected Recipes, Mrs. George O. Thurn, 1934

Incidentally, she also writes to "mix water in with knife," which echoes our other article's instruction to mix in the water with a spatula, "chopping and the turning back until the mixture is formed into a ball of dough." Delia Smith also uses a knife in her video. So the instruction works, but I had to see it before it made sense. At any rate, we can see Mrs. Thurn's happy results here:

Mrs. Thurn makes the kind of pie crust people don't leave behind on the plate. But getting to what we made today:

We put a cranberry pie in this crust.

This recipe does in fact fill out a pan better than one from the biggest article my great-grandmother pasted onto the page. And true to the recipe's title, it was indeed very flaky. 

I think I did this page in the right order: first, learning from the two newspaper articles, then applying our lessons to the short recipe in the bottom corner. More importantly, we got a lot of pie out of completing this whole page.

Italian Honey Tarts: They contain no honey and may not be Italian

I have no idea what makes this "Italian."

Italian Tarts with Italian Honey        Pastry: 8 oz (2 cups) flour 1 tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) 5 oz (10 tbsp) butter 1 tsp sugar ⅛ tsp lemon extract (or juice of 1 lemon) 1 egg yolk 2 tbsp ice-cold water (have at least half a cup on hand)        Italian Honey: 3 eggs 4 oz (½ cup) sugar 1 pinch (⅛ tsp) cream of tartar 2 oz (4 tbsp) butter 1 tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) 1 to 3 tsp lemon extract (depending on your taste) Have a 12-cup muffin pan ready. (Or use tartlet pans if you have them.) You probably don't need to coat it with cooking spray, but I did so I could be very sure nothing would get stuck.        To make the pastry: Sift flour and salt (if using) into a large bowl. Rub in the butter. Beat together the sugar, lemon extract (or lemon juice), egg yolk, and 2 tablespoons of water. Work this into the flour mixture. Mix until it forms a stiff dough, adding more water if it's too crumbly. Place in a sealed container (a ziploc bag will do) and let rest for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Divide the dough into two portions. Roll half of it out. Cut it into small circles, then line the muffin cups with them. When rerolling the dough scraps, stack them on each other rather than smushing them into a ball-- this keeps the dough from getting tough. When you use up the first half of the dough, repeat with the rest of it. (If you have a large space to work with, you can roll all the dough out instead of dividing it in two. But you will have a very large and perhaps unwieldy sheet of it.) Refrigerate the tart shells for at least 30 minutes. (If you wrap the pan well, you can leave them in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days if desired).        When ready to bake, make the Italian Honey: In the top of a double boiler (or a mixing bowl that can handle sitting over a pot of boiling water), whisk the eggs, sugar, and cream of tartar until thoroughly mixed. Add the butter and place over simmering water (simmering, not boiling hard), stirring constantly until the butter is melted and the mixture is about as thick as cake batter. Remove from heat and allow to cool.        To bake: Heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C). Bake the pastry shells until they are slightly golden. Then spoon in the filling almost to the top of each tart shell, being careful none of it spills down the sides. If you want to be very sure your tarts won't stick, let the empty pastry shells cool until they won't fall apart when you handle them. (You don't need to wait for them to get all the way to room temperature.) Then lift each one out, put it into a paper cupcake liner, and return it to the muffin pan. Then add the filling. Bake until the tarts puff up and are firm when you shake the pan. Note: You can just buy frozen tartlet shells for this. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935; page 3

I saw the recipe for "Italian Tarts" and it looked like an empty pie crust. Then I noticed the recipe below is "Italian Honey." Apparently the staff at The Southern Districts Advocate assumed that readers would know that the Italian honey goes in the Italian tarts.

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935

I would love to know what makes this "Italian honey." Is this derived from an Italian honey substitute? I looked up "Italian honey" to see if people still make anything resembling this recipe (in Australia or anywhere else). But I only found people selling honey from Italy. I didn't even see anyone describing it as an "old, forgotten dish" like bloater paste.

Whatever "Italian honey" is, it starts off with eggs and a lot of butter. I almost thought it was a custard, but it seems closer to our chess pie.

I was going to put this directly on the stove burner because I rarely bother with double boilers these days. But then I realized this would turn into scrambled eggs given the slightest mistake. So I perched our bowl over a pot of water (simmering, not boiling!) as the recipe says.

The recipe says to cook "till thick," but I didn't know what that meant. Should our Italian honey be runny enough to pour? Should it be firm enough to hold a shape? I cooked it until you could swipe a finger across a coated spoon and leave a line, which brings us about into cake batter territory. Our honey would have made a very nice sauce, but I didn't see how this could ever be used in tarts. It would spill as soon as you lifted one off the plate.

I was going to dye it purple, but I added a few tasteful drops of yellow instead.

Upon tasting, our Italian honey reminded me again of chess pie (which as we said, is very similar in ingredients). I did not regret setting up a double boiler.

I was going to use our Italian honey as a sort of custard sauce in the trifle we saw recently. But then I realized I would never forgive myself for half-finishing a recipe. We therefore would complete our Italian tarts.

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough butter for the pastry, so I had to substitute half shortening. I've seen a lot of people swear that shortening makes the best pie crusts, that it handles ever-so-well, and that it is by far superior to every other option (as long as you don't care how the pie crust tastes). But every time I've tried to use shortening, my crusts have come out crumbly and hard to work with. They always crack no matter how gently I "ease" them into place.

By contrast, I can drape a butter crust into place almost as easily as laying out a dishrag. And butter is supposed to be harder to work with. As a visual reminder:

This is all butter, no shortening.

Let's compare that to just about every shortening crust I've ever made:

Getting back to the recipe, I'm not sure what the egg yolk is supposed to do in the pastry. I looked it up online and only found a lot of AI slop. A few actual humans made vague claims that the pie will be "richer." 

These were very irksome to get into place because of the shortening. They kept wanting to crack and crumble. But on the bright side, we learned that our largest pastry cutter (viz. an extra-large peach can with both ends cut off) from when we made freestanding lemon tarts is the perfect size for making pie shells in a muffin pan. I used to have to make lots of little pastry balls and roll them out one by one.

I filled two tarts before I realized that I was only inviting failure. I had forgotten to pop the little shells out of the pan and into into paper liners. That meant that if even the tiniest drop of Italian honey dripped out of place, it would glue our tarts to the pan. And once tarts get stuck, you can only get them out in pieces.

I had no idea how long to bake our Italian tarts, so I took them out of the oven after they stopped wobbling when I shook the pan. I didn't know what to think when they puffed up, though. Had I made some unholy sugar-laden bastardization of that "cloud bread" that made the rounds when keto was the big diet trend? (In case you missed it, "cloud bread" was basically an aerated version of those weird scrambled-egg sheets they use on Egg McMuffins.)

Our tarts deflated back into normal as they cooled. Nevertheless, I wasn't reassured until I cut one open and found that we did not have tart-sized pucks of scrambled egg.Instead, we had dessert.

The special Italian pie crust tasted very ordinary. If you're making your own pie dough, a few drops of lemon extract won't go amiss. But if you want to simply buy frozen tart shells, you won't miss it.

These have the same texture as Harris Teeter's lemon squares without the heavy payload of sugar. They're perfect for when you want something sweet but not too sweet. I'm still not sure why they're called Italian honey, but I did like them enough to make them again.