The Great American Pie Tour

As Easy as Eating Pie

As presented in Grafton's Valley Messenger. Read Latest Edition

Beginning 16 Feb 2022 at Cold Brew Café 53 Armidale St.,
(Armidale St. and Cambridge St.) South Grafton, NSW.

For those of you just joining, here’s a recap: A dear friend of the Cold Brew Café told us he longs to drive across the United States, stop at diners along the road and just eat pie. Oh boy, what a great trip that would be! But, we thought, why go all the way to the States when we could do that right here in South Grafton! This is a tour of America’s most beloved food: pie.

Chiffon Pie - The Pie King and the Cake Wars

Interesting twists and turns can be the deciding factors to the preferences we find in our diets and culture, and can affect even our way of life. For example: The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773, when American colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbour, may have been the deciding moment when coffee became the dominant beverage in the Americas. Drinking coffee became a political statement as tea was considered “the beverage of the enemy.”

In the late the 1910s, as ovens were becoming more reliable, cake was gaining in popularity in American households. For Californian, Monroe Boston Strause, a pie inventor, reformer, and engineer during the 1920s, this was unacceptable! He invented and perfected pie making techniques to the extent that Americans would prefer pie for the next century. And it all started with one pie.

You may remember a few issues ago we promised to tell you about “The Pie King”, Monroe Boston Strause. We said he did not create the black bottom pie; but we would happily argue, he may be the sole reason why pie is inextricably entangled with American life today.

Monroe Boston Strause deemed pie to be “The Great American Dessert”, superior to every other food on earth. He viewed new pie recipes as unique innovations and pie preparation techniques as equations that needed to be solved. Even his recipes were described as “formulas”.

He wrote several books: How to Make Better Pies, 1936, Pies for Profit, 1938, Pie Marches On, 1939. Retail and Wholesale Recipes for Pineapple Baked Goods, 1940, (published in conjunction with the pineapple producers), and The Bakers Digest, 1951. All these books contain conversion tables, instructions and pictures for pie preparation for home or wholesale bakers with formulas that are easily scaled up for mass production. He traveled 30,000 miles a year to teach hotels and restaurants how to make his popular pie. He was America’s first celebrity pastry chef and we believe we are not out of bounds in saying, without Monroe Boston Strause the American diner might never have existed.

What was the pie that Monroe Boston Strause invented that swept the nation, delighted stars like Mary Pickford (silent film super-star), and all of America? Chiffon Pie, of course!

Strause invented the graham cracker crust for his Chiffon Pie. The filling was made by incorporating stiffly beaten egg whites into a cream that had been thickened with cornstarch. He was inspired by recipes for French pastry cream. The outcome was a delicate, airy filling that maintained its firmness and volume that Strause’s mother described as “chiffon!” And the New York Harald Tribune said, “stood up like a soldier on parade.”

Chiffon Pie can be made with any citrus but we’ve decided to present Lemon Chiffon Pie at Cold Brew Café for the next two weeks. Our crust will be made with the closest thing we can find to graham crackers here in Australia, Digestives!

We hope you’ll join us at Cold Brew Café for this pie and other savouries and sweets. Find us on Facebook @coldbrewcafeaustralia for our progress, "tips and secrets” and other updates in making Lemon Chiffon Pie. Search #greatamericanpietour to find our past posts and pies on the Great American Pie Tour and look for the final Lemon Chiffon Pie recipe in the next week’s printing of the Valley Messenger.

Lemon Chiffon Pie Recipe

Lemon Chiffon Pie seems like it’s going to be daunting and then it’s — ok. Not the easiest pie to make as egg whites can be hard to get out of the egg and if you get even a thought of fat in them they don’t whip well; but, the lemon curd is a joy and would make cardboard taste great! The Digestive crust is delicious and easy with a food processor but if you have a ziplock plastic bag and a rolling pin you can easily make this crust without one. We got our recipe from America’s Test Kitchen and though it took a few pies to master, it has proven to be one of our absolute favourites!

Crust

200g Digestives
3 tablespoons (37g) sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons (71g) Butter

Method

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Process digestives in food processor until finely ground, about 30 seconds (you should have about 11⁄4 cups crumbs). Add sugar and salt and pulse to combine. Add melted butter and pulse until mixture resembles wet sand.

Transfer crumbs to 9-inch pie plate. Press crumbs evenly into bottom and up sides of plate. Bake until crust is lightly browned, 15 to 18 minutes. Allow crust to cool completely.

Filling

The filling has a lemon curd bottom and a lemon chiffon top that is made with the lemon curd. Watch in the directions for the split of gelatine and sugar.
1 teaspoon unflavoured gelatine
4 tablespoons water
5 large eggs (2 whole, 3 separated)
1 1⁄4 cups (248g) sugar - 1 cup for custard, ¼ cup for chiffon
6 tablespoon cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoon grated lemon zest plus 3/4 cup juice (4 lemons)
1⁄4 cup heavy cream
ounces cream cheese, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, softened

Method

Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon gelatine over 2 tablespoons water in small bowl and let sit until gelatine softens, about 5 minutes.
Repeat with second small bowl, remaining 1⁄2 teaspoon gelatine, and remaining 2 tablespoons water.
Whisk 2 eggs and 3 yolks together in medium saucepan until thoroughly combined.
Whisk in 1 cup sugar, cornstarch, and salt until well combined. Whisk in lemon zest and juice and heavy cream.
Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and slightly translucent, 4 to 5 minutes (mixture should register 170 degrees).
Stir in 1 water-gelatine mixture until dissolved.
Remove pan from heat and let stand for 2 minutes.

Remove 11⁄4 cups curd from pan and pour through fine-mesh strainer set in bowl.
Transfer strained curd to prepared pie shell (do not wash out strainer or bowl).
Place filled pie shell in freezer.
Add remaining water-gelatine mixture and cream cheese to remaining curd in pan and whisk to combine. (If cream cheese does not melt, briefly return pan to low heat.)
Pour through strainer into now-empty bowl.

Using stand mixer, whip 3 egg whites on medium-low speed until foamy, about 2 minutes.
Increase speed to medium-high and slowly add remaining 1⁄4 cup sugar. Continue whipping until whites are stiff and glossy, about 4 minutes. Add curd–cream cheese mixture and whip on medium speed until few streaks remain, about 30 seconds.
Remove bowl from mixer and, using spatula, scrape sides of bowl and stir mixture until no streaks remain.
Remove pie shell from freezer and carefully pour chiffon over curd, allowing chiffon to mound slightly in centre.
Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or up to 2 days before serving.
Be sure to use toothpicks to cover and keep cellophane off of the chiffon.

1 Anastopoulo, R. The ‘Pie Engineer’ Who Designed a Dessert for the Jazz Age retrieved from: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pie-history