A custard pie is any type of uncooked

custard Custard is a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, and sometimes also flour, corn starch, or gelatin. Depending on the recipe, custard may vary in consistency fro ...

mixture added to an uncooked or partially cooked crust and baked together. In North America, custard pie commonly refers to a plain mixture of milk, eggs, sugar, salt,

vanilla extract Vanilla extract is a Solution (chemistry), solution made by maceration (food), macerating and percolation, percolating vanilla, vanilla pods in a solution of ethanol and water. It is considered an essential ingredient in many Western desserts, es ...

and sometimes

nutmeg Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...

combined with a pie crust. It is distinctly different from a

cream pie A cream pie, crème pie, or creme pie is a type of pie filled with a rich custard or pudding that is made from milk, cream, sugar, wheat flour, and eggs. It comes in many forms, including vanilla, lemon, lime, peanut butter, banana, coconut, a ...

, which contains cooked custard poured into a cooled, precooked crust. In the United Kingdom, the comical or political act of

pieing Pieing or a pie attack is the act of throwing a pie at a person. In pieing, the goal is usually to humiliate the victim while avoiding actual injury. For this reason the pie is traditionally of the cream pie, cream variety without a top crust, an ...

is conventionally done with a "custard pie". Some common custard pies include

pumpkin pie Pumpkin pie is a dessert pie with a spiced, pumpkin-based custard filling. The pumpkin and pumpkin pie are both a symbol of harvest time, and pumpkin pie is generally eaten during the fall and early winter. In the United States and Canada it is u ...

, lemon and buttermilk

chess pie Chess pie, also known as Jefferson Davis pie is a dessert with a filling composed mainly of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and sometimes milk, characteristic of Southern United States cuisine. It is similar to pecan pie without any nuts. History ...

coconut cream pie A cream pie, crème pie, or creme pie is a type of pie filled with a rich custard or pudding that is made from milk, cream, sugar, wheat flour, and eggs. It comes in many forms, including vanilla, lemon, lime, peanut butter, banana, coconut, an ...

, and

buko pie Buko pie, sometimes anglicized as coconut pie, is a traditional Filipino baked young coconut (malauhog) custard pie. It is considered a specialty in the city of Los Baños, Laguna located on the island of Luzon. Buko pie is made with young c ...

. True custard is defined as a liquid thickened with eggs. Due to the often large number of whole eggs in custard pie, it is a very rich pie. The

Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

s were the first to understand the binding properties of

eggs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...

. During the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, the first custard pies, as we know them, began to appear. Initially, custards were used only as fillings for

pie A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), swe ...

pastries Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water and shortening (solid fats, including butter or lard) that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as '' bakers' confectionery''. The word "pastries" suggests ...

and

tart A tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with ...

s. Both Europe and Asia had recipes that contained custards. The word custard is derived from ''crustade'', which is a tart with a crust. After the 16th century, custards began to be used in individual dishes rather than as a filling in crusts. Today, custards are used as filling in pies and tarts, and as individual dishes. Ideally a custard pie should be light and delicate, but still have good body. Custards can be made in two ways: baked or stirred upon the stove, but most custard pie recipes call for baking. The eggs in custard mixtures, when cooked, turn from liquid to solid. If cooked over excessive heat, the eggs will curdle, which is extremely undesirable. Curdling can be prevented by using lower temperatures and stirring. As such, making true custard pie is a very delicate process.

History

Savory pies with meat fillings were far more common than sweet pies in the

Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies The cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies includes the foods, bread, eating habits, and cooking methods of the Colonial United States. In the period leading up to 1776, a number of events led to a drastic change in the diet of the American colonists ...

. Sweet pies, when they were available, were made with a simple custard base of fresh milk, sugar and eggs. Some of these traditional pies like

buttermilk pie Buttermilk pie is a pie in American cuisine. Associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States, it is one of the desperation pies, made using simple, staple ingredients. It is similar to, and sometimes confused with, chess pie, but it ...

almond custard Frangipane ( , ) is a sweet almond-flavored custard used in a variety of ways including cakes and such Pastry, pastries as the Bakewell tart, conversation tart, Jésuite and pithivier. A French spelling from a 1674 cookbook is ''franchipane'' w ...

, Irish potato pie and bean pie (associated with the

Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...

) are uncommon in modern times.

As a comedic device

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

, pies thrown or pushed into the face are usually referred to as "custard pies". Custard pies are used as a comedic device by clowns in many circus performances, in practical jokes for harmless fun and also for throwing into the faces of public figures as a sign of disapproval. UK Saturday morning programme

Tiswas ''Tiswas'' (; an acronym of "Today Is Saturday: Watch And Smile") was a British children's television series that originally aired on Saturday mornings from 5 January 1974 to 3 April 1982, and was produced for the ITV network by ATV. It was c ...

had custard pies as a regular feature and even had a character called The Phantom Flan Flinger, a masked man who pied people. The World Custard Pie Throwing Championships take place annually in the village of

Coxheath Coxheath is a village and civil parish within the Borough of Maidstone, Kent, England. The parish is approximately south of Maidstone. It is mainly centred along Heath Road which links the villages of Yalding and Boughton Monchelsea to the we ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

References

{{Reflist Custard desserts Sweet pies

History

As a comedic device

See also

References