Vintage Strawberry Sponge Pie

Ingredients
1 unbaked pie shell
1 cup sugar
2 tbs flour
1 qt berries (4 cups sliced strawberries)
2 eggs, separated
1/2 cup milk
This recipe makes enough filling for one nine inch pie crust. There will be enough filling left over to fill 4 small ramekins. See my Musing From The Vintage Recipe Project post  here for more information about the vintage recipes.

Since the pie pan I used was a 9 inch pan you may be able to fill 2 – 8 inch pie crusts. I hate waste so I filled the ramekins also.Or you may just want to fill individual ramekins


Directions
Hull the berries and rinse with cold water. In a large bowl mix the berries, sugar and flour. Stir to evenly coat the berries.
Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl and mix with the milk. Add the egg milk mixture to the bowl of strawberries and mix well.Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl until stiff.
Fold the stiffly beaten egg whites into the strawberry mixture and pour into the unbaked pie shell.The original recipe says to bake slowly for half an hour. The upper part will be like sponge cake: the remainder like strawberry pie.
Any kind of berries can be used.I baked the filled pie at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. I baked the ramekins for 25 minutes.I did not find this pie to be sponge like on the top like the recipe claims. But I have never eaten a “sponge” pie before. So the top of the pie probably turned out exactly as the recipe claims.
The pie had a very nice texture and flavor. The beaten egg whites floated to the top and give the top of the pie a nice crisp meringue texture. Think marbled meringue. I say marbled because the strawberries poked through the meringue on the top of the pie. The juices didn’t run all over the plate when I sliced it which I liked very much. 
 
I think although the recipe is for a berry pie that you could substitute peaches and it would also be very good. I may try that myself when the fresh peaches come in season. This recipe is very easy to throw together and if you used a packaged pie crust instead of homemade like I did it would only take about 15 minutes to throw  together.
 
As I was looking through a new vintage cookbook  circa 1950 that I just bought last week I came across two more “sponge” pie recipes.  One was named lemon sponge pie, the other was called Lemon Cake-Top Pudding. They both sound like the same recipe ..almost so I may have to try them out to compare them.