Tarte à la Bouillie

Old-fashioned sweet dough custard pie

Back when everyone got their eggs from yard hens and their milk straight from the cow, the animals would often supply a household with more than they could keep up with, but the resourceful homemaker was always one step ahead with a good recipe. My mother recalls how her mother, Yolande Doiron—we called her Gammy—liked to make custard whenever she had extra eggs and milk that needed to be used.

A basic custard recipe was built around eggs, milk and sugar, but it was also versatile. It could be sweetened, thickened or flavored, depending on the dish. A small batch might be made in a saucepan and eaten as a stand-alone dessert, or a bigger batch might be made, requiring the largest gumbo pot in the kitchen, and from there several batches of ice cream.

Gammy’s recipe for tarte à la bouillie, pictured below, combines an extra-thick, pudding-like custard filling with a cookie-like sweet dough pie crust, and the recipe yields enough dough for three full pies, including the lattice to go on top.

Handwritten recipe for my grandmother’s sweet dough pies

Gammy’s Sweet Dough

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cup butter

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Cream sugar and softened butter together in mixing bowl. Add milk, vanilla and beaten egg. Mix dry ingredients separately, then fold into mixture. Form into a ball and chill in refrigerator overnight—or in the freezer for an hour—before rolling. Sprinkle some flour on the countertop and roll out the dough using a sheet of wax paper between the dough and the rolling pin. Sprinkle flour liberally to the dough and to the rolling pin during the rolling process. Place pie plate upside down over the rolled-out dough, cut around the edges, then turn the pie plate over with the circle of dough inside it.

This recipe makes enough dough for three eight-inch pie crusts. Or make two pie crusts and use the remaining dough for smaller foldover-type hand pies. Be sure to reserve some dough for the lattice to criss-cross over the tarte.

From top to bottom, my great-great-grandmother, great-grandmother and grandmother

Custard Filling

4 cups milk

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup corn starch

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp butter

While milk is warming in a saucepan over low heat, combine sugar and corn starch thoroughly in a mixing bowl by hand. Beat eggs and add to sugar mixture. Slowly drip the egg mixture into the milk while stirring constantly. Continue to warm over low heat, stirring frequently, until custard thickens. Remove from heat and add vanilla and butter. Whisk to make custard smooth if necessary. This makes enough custard for two 8-inch tartes.

Pour the custard into an 8- or 9-inch pie plate lined with sweet dough. Cut half-inch-wide strips from the rolled out dough to create a lattice over the top of the tarte. Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees. The custard is already cooked before you put the tarte in the oven, so you determine when the pie is done by when the crust is cooked. Using a glass pie plate is helpful because it allows you to see how the crust is cooking, and you can take it out when it is done to your liking.

Variation: My mom likes to substitute the following for one of the cups of milk: 3/4 cup evaporated milk and 1/4 cup water.

Note: store uneaten tarte in refrigerator