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I first heard ofsour cream and raisin piein the back seat of a car. I was in Los Angeles for my sister’s wedding and found myself in a Lyft Shared from LAX with a lady named Jane. Jane and I got to talking about pie, as you do when you have time to pass, and she told me that sour cream raisin was her favorite.
I was a little taken aback, expecting her to chooseapple pieorKey lime,pecanorpumpkin. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the combination of raisins and sour cream in a pie. But I knew that I had to try it for myself.
As it turns out, there’s a whole baking contest devoted to the sour cream raisin pie at the Iowa State Fair. The original recipe is believed to have been brought over from Germany by Mennonite communities, but it soon garnered popularity across the American Midwest. The pie begins with a buttery, flakyblind-baked crustthat’s filled with boiled raisins which are folded into a custard made with milk and sour cream, all warmly spiced with cloves and cinnamon. A billowy meringue seals the top, making a dramatic crown for an otherwise humble filling.
When I baked my way across the country for my personal-project-turned-cookbook50 Pies, 50 States在爱荷华州,我知道是我的机会try my hand at sour cream and raisin pie. And like most things I encounter that first bring me pause, I was happy for my doubts to be proven wrong. With my first bite the pie took me back to when I was five years old, when my favorite ice cream flavor was rum raisin. This pie I’d never tried before triggered core memories of warmth and home.
After much digging I have come to believe that the pie’s origins must be tied to the funeral pie, also known as raisin pie (or rosine pie, using the German word for raisin). The pie started as a double-crusted dessert, purely filled to the brim with raisins in the place of fresh fruit. The addition of sour cream or milk came much later.
Funeral pies like this one are traditionally served with a meal prepared for the family or friends following the memorial service. It’s a reminder to family and friends in a time of grief that there is still some sweetness in the world. Before the invention of refrigeration, fresh fruit was not always readily available, but most homes had some sort of dried fruit on hand, so the pie could be made all year long. It kept well, so it could be baked a day or two ahead of the funeral supper and stored safely without trouble.
Iowa’s sour cream raisin pie moves beyond the traditional Mennonite version, folding in the sour cream and beaten eggs before topping with stiff-peakedmeringue, then baking and chilling.
That fluffy meringue gets toasty and caramelly, a just-crisp contrast with the creamy spiced custard. However long this pie has been around or variations it has taken, the juicy pop of those raisins never gets old.
