Easy Egg Custard Pie

First pie I ever made, and it still delights me in every way. Scalding the milk is a technique seldom used in today’s recipe instructions; it’s gone the way of sifting flour and testing cake layers for doneness with a toothpick or a spear of broomstraw. It was part of basic cooking and baking when I took up the art and craft as a 10-year-old child, and I simply read what to do and did it. Years later, fresh out of an excellent food-writing course at UCLA’s extension division in the late 1980’s, I got to wondering about why recipes like egg custard pie traditionally called for scalding the milk before stirring it up with the eggs and sugar.

International Association of Culinary Professionals

As a new member of IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals), I had access to a massive directory listing contact information for food writers, cooking teachers, and many others whose daily work centered around the kitchen and the table, and I spent at least a day wondering and fretting about whether I really could do what the organization said we could do — call up a fellow member, even a well-known highly accomplished one, and ask a question out of the blue.

Fan of Marion Cunningham

A longtime fan of Marion Cunningham’s writing, both in the San Francisco Chronicle and in her books, including the Fannie Farmer Cookbooks and the recently published “The Breakfast Book”, I decided that she was person who could best address my question. To my astonishment, delight, and shock, she picked up the phone and took my call with graciousness and warmth. To my further astonishment, she entertained my question with respect and honesty, sharing my interest and then conveying the amazing fact that she didn’t know the answer either.

That’s all I remember from the conversation, and to this day, I still don’t know the answer. What I learned from her was something much more important to me as a writer, cook, and teacher than the why and wherefores of scalding milk: I learned that she was who she was and where she was, not because she knew everything there was to know about food, but because she knew a lot, and was deeply curious and forever on the road to learning more and sharing the explorations and discoveries she made with students and colleagues all along the way.

What’s In this Easy Egg Custard Pie?

It’s nothing fancy, and the end product is greater than the sum of its everyday parts. Eggs, milk, sugar,  a pinch of salt, pure vanilla extract, and a generous little blessing of nutmeg, classic on a Southern custard pie. Stir them together well, pour into a piecrust, and bake.

Start with a hot oven (425 degrees F) to kick-start the baking, and then reduce heat to 350 to gently transform the beaten eggs into smooth sweet and silken custard. 

From Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan by Nancie McDermott (Chronicle Books, October 2010)

Video Time: How an Historic Bakery in Portugal Makes Their Iconic Egg Tarts

I loved watching this video (3 minutes 16 seconds) in which the team at Pasteis de Belem makes many many many tiny and delectable Portugese egg tarts. No words, just music and action!