A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

To serve the pie, you cut the upper crust with a sharp knife, and serve with a spoon, taking a piece of crust and plenty of fruit out on each plate. No under crust is there. If you have an under crust with very juicy pie it will be pretty sure to be soggy and heavy. The English way of serving these pies is a very nice one, and is, as I have described, with whipped cream. Serve whipped cream with a fruit pie. Among other nice things that we can not get in this country is Devonshire cream, which is a cream almost as thick as the hard sauce you make by mixing powdered sugar and egg together; it is thick enough almost to cut. We can not get that cream here, but use thick, nice cream, sweetened or not, as you like. One of my English friends, who first taught me this way of serving pie, said that at her home they never sweetened the cream; they simply whipped it to a froth and served it piled up on a dish by the side of the pie. The pie was taken out on a plate, and then two or three spoonfuls of this whipped cream laid on the plate by the side of the pie. You can sweeten it if you like. MERINGUE. I will next make a _meringue_. I have already told you to use the whites of three eggs, three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar--and that really must be pulverized very fine and sifted. In beating the eggs you can always get them light very quickly, if they are reasonably cold in the beginning, by beating with a change of movement. Beat until your hand grows tired, and then simply change the way you hold the beater. Don't stop beating. Of course you can use any kind of an egg-whip you like. This which I use is made of twisted wire. Only take care to have the egg beaten entirely stiff. Do not have any liquid egg in the bottom of the bowl. In the summer time