Sweet Egg Pie

Ready for a bit of a history lesson mixed in with your food?  Alright, the first rule is: don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.  Wash them first, of course, but then really get in there and touch the food you're working with.  Don't be afraid!  It will make you feel more connected to your foodstuffs and I promise you the food will turn out better.  You'll also start to know by feel when things are prepared properly.

Yesterday at work I made a Sweet Egg Pie.  This recipe comes from Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple-- a very popular cookbook in the colonies during the 18th century.  I own a facsimile copy myself, in fact, though I haven't actually used it to cook in my own kitchen.

So, Sweet Egg Pie.  Here's the recipe: "To make a sweet Egg-Pie.  Make a good crust, cover your dish with it, then have ready twelve eggs boiled hard, cut them in slices, and lay them in your pie, throw half a pound of currants, clean washed and picked, all over the eggs, then beat up four eggs well, mixed with half a pint of white wine, grate in a small nutmeg and make it pretty sweet with sugar.  You are to mind to lay a half a pound of butter between the eggs, then pour in your wine and eggs, and cover your pie.  Bake it half an hour, or until the crust is done."

Yum, right?... it actually sounds pretty gross to me, and I didn't get to try any because it needed to look nice for the display, but-- surprisingly!-- when it came out of the oven it really did smell delicious.  So how to do this?  Make yourself a pie crust first.  These are really quite simple.  Take a pound of flour, a good amount of softened butter (maybe half a cup?-- we don't really measure these things out in the colonial kitchens, unless the recipe says specifically what to put in by pounds or half pounds-- scales were essential in 18th-century kitchens), cut the butter into little chunks and drop into the flour, then-- with your hands-- mix the flour and butter together until the flour grains and feels kind of sandy and breaks apart easily.  Then add in an egg and some water (about half a cup or less-- not a lot of water, you can always add more, but can't take any out).  And voila!  A pie crust!

Put that in your pie tin, then... well, follow the recipe!  You can actually hard boil nine eggs or so, instead of twelve, because our eggs are much larger than the chicken eggs of the past.  Then peel them and slice them and lay them in the pie crust.  Next put a half pound of butter over those eggs-- I just softened a good chunk and then sort of smeared it on over the eggs with my hands-- and throw on a half pound of currants.  Then mix up your sweet sauce!  Use any white wine you wish-- I'd go for one on the sweeter side, though, given the nature of the pie.  Also, on the cheaper side since you're mixing it with sugar, eggs, and nutmeg.  As to the amount of sugar and nutmeg, make it to your liking.  You can test the sauce with your finger before putting it over the pie to determine if you want more sugar or spice (just remember, eating raw eggs is dangerous blah blah blah).

Finally, the recipe calls for a top crust.  I didn't have enough pie-crust dough left to make a full top crust, and I didn't feel like mixing more, so I latticed mine.  Granted, it's not perfect since this was my first time to try latticing, and I didn't try to weave it because I was running out of pie dough, and this was probably only my third or fourth pie ever, but since I'm working at the Governor's Palace the food must must MUST look beautiful.  Everything needs to be garnished and aesthetically pleasing.  He's paying us good money to do this-- or, he would have been.  Seriously, in the 18th century the cook, a man hired and trained in England, was the highest paid servant on the property.  Then, bake your pie!  We made bread yesterday, too, and that bakes around 375 (F), so the pie was probably baked around 325 (F) for maybe thirty-five minutes-- until the lattices had turned a lovely golden brown. 

Then, if you're brave, enjoy!  :)