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This week I decided that everyone needed some pie. But because this is Mid-Century Menu, the pie is mostly corn.

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This is Corn Pie!

Corn Pie
Author: Calvary Cookbook, 1963
Ingredients
  • 3 Tbls butter
  • 1 chopped onion
  • 1 green pepper, cut in julienne strips
  • 3/4 cup tomatoes
  • 3/4 pound hamburger
  • 1 Tbls sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
  • 1/4 cup raisins
  • Corn mixture –
  • 3 Tbls butter
  • 1 1/2 cup corn niblets and juice
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 Tbls sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
  1. Filling:
  2. Saute onion and pepper in butter 10 mins. Add tomatoes, cook 5 mins longer. Add hamburger, sugar, salt and cook 15 mins more. Remove from heat and add eggs and raisins. Mix well and set aside.
  3. Corn Mixture:
  4. Grind corn (I used my food processor), saving the juice, add to butter. Mix into a paste, the flour, milk, sugar and salt. Add to corn, stirring constantly. Cook over low heat 10 mins. Add eggs, well-beaten. Pour half of corn mixture into 2 quart casserole, pour on meat mixture, then top with rest of corn.

So, I was intrigued by the “crust” on this pie, and I decided to give it a go to see exactly what it would be like. And since I was so obsessed by the idea of making a homemade creamed corn crust/topping, I was completely blind to the filling ingredients until I started cooking them.

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This filling has raisins and sugar in it. That’s…pretty sweet. When I first read through this I thought it said a teaspoon of sugar, but it actually called for a tablespoon of added sugar. Yikes.

And there are hard-boiled eggs. Because why not.

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And here is the creamed corn topping, before mixing it with the flour and eggs. And more sugar.

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The finished pie, ready for the oven!

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“This…is really sweet.”

“How sweet?”

“Sweeter than creamed corn. So, really sweet.”

The Verdict: Sweet

From The Tasting Notes –

All my fears proved to be true, and this was a sweet casserole. I am not a big fan of sweet main dishes at all, so I did not enjoy this one. Tom ate his serving, but didn’t have seconds. Even taking into account the fact that the modern corn I used is probably much sweeter than the corn available back then, there was still a lot of sugar in this recipe. The corn topping/base ended up tasting fine, but it was a lot of fuss for something that didn’t taste any better than creamed corn. It certainly wasn’t better than corn bread. But this recipe might be really good with some tweaks. If I were to make this again, I would forget about the corn nonsense and just spread the top with cornbread batter. And I would add a teaspoon of two of vinegar to the filling and make it kind of like sloppy joes. I think that would be tasty. And I would leave out the hard boiled eggs. Because…seriously. No hard boiled eggs needed.

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