Grandma Rang’s Cottage Cheese Pie

When in my mother’s opinion, I was strong enough to get out of bed, I wanted to see what a Quarantine Sign looked like.  I had heard someone pounding on our front door, and Mom or Dad had told me that everything was all right, that no one was trying to get into the house.  It was only a man nailing a sign to the door telling people not to come inside until everyone was well again.

“Everyone” was me.  I had scarlet fever.  My mother and two sisters had to stay home, and my father had to wash carefully every morning before going to the garage where he worked. No one else in my family caught the disease, and I finally got well.  I am not sure how old I was, but it must have been between my fourth and fifth birthdays.  

One thing I remember clearly is that, when Mom first let me get up, I had forgotten how to walk.  I wanted to see that Quarantine Sign, so Mom had to hold my hand when I went to the front door.  The sign on the door was red.  At the top, big letters said “QUARANTINE”  with smaller lettering underneath explaining that our house was infected with Scarlet Fever.

That was the first time I was confined in the house because I was sick. I was eight years old when the second quarantine occurred.  I was in third grade at Blair School, the same one-room my father had attended when he was a boy.  There were nineteen or twenty students at Blair when three quarters of us came down with measles and chicken pox.

If you have the option, do not get chicken pox and measles at the same time.  I still have scars from picking those itching scabs while lying in bed in a darkened room as the blisters healed.  I can’t say anything good about chicken pox, but I complained so much that my mother taught me how to knit to distract me while I was in bed.  I knitted a pair of socks (only the straight parts, Mom knitted the heels), and I am still rather proud of my accomplishment, though I have never tried to duplicate the feat.

My sisters came down with both diseases, which are dangerous infections.  My sister Barbara was so sick that a doctor came to our house, gave her something to lower her fever and helped her recover with no permanent problems.   Children still die of measles, and many adults develop shingles, which is caused by the chicken pox virus that hides in the nervous system for life.  I have had shingles and do not recommend it.  Today, nearly all children in developed countries are vaccinated against measles and chicken pox, and there are vaccines that prevent or lessen the severity of shingles.  Get vaccinated.

Although I wasn’t as sick as my sisters, I did lose my appetite.  This may seem like a small matter to you, but it really worried my mother.  Normally I was a two-plates-of-food-for-dinner boy, as old photos confirm.  I was, however, also an active kid who filled the woodbox, fed the chickens, rode his bike when there was not snow, skated and skied in the winter, built snow forts in winter and pole and board forts in the summer.  Thus, what looks like fat is really well developed muscle.

Confined to bed in a darkened room, I simply wasn’t hungry.  Mom did her best to tempt my tastebuds.  She made chicken noodle soup, of course, since every woman I knew claimed it was a sovereign remedy for any illness.  I vaguely remember her spooning broth or lemon toddy into my mouth and offering fresh bread.  I am sure that she also baked some treats—cookies, cakes and probably pies.  “You have to eat something,” she would say, and I would try.

I don’t remember it, but she may well have made Grandma Rang’s Cottage Cheese Pie.  I found the recipe written on the back of the same card Mom had copied Grandma’s Dutch Pudding recipe.  Grandma Rang had a hen house filled with layers and made her own butter and cottage cheese, so it would have been a fairly economical dessert.  She had only to buy sugar and a lemon for the filling.

As usual, the recipe is a list of ingredients with brief instructions to mix them together, pour the batter into a flour crust and bake about an hour until a knife comes out clean.  I have made this pie several times to fine tune the instructions.  I assume that Grandma added some cream to her cottage cheese curds, so I made the pie with ordinary whole milk cottage cheese from the market.

The result is a refreshing variation on cheese cake.  Using an electric mixer breaks up the larger curds, but enough remain to give this pie an interesting texture.  The lemon zest works magically well with the cheese and eggs.  The flavor reminds me of those quarantines of long ago as we huddle in our home self-quarantined against COVID-19.  

It’s a pie to perk up your day. You really should try it.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

2 cups whole milk small curd cottage cheese

1 T corn starch

zest from one lemon

1 unbaked nine-inch pie shell

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350º.  

Cream the butter and sugar together.  Stir in the eggs one at a time.  Grate the lemon  and stir the zest and corn starch into the egg and sugar mixture. Add the cottage cheese and and blend the batter for about two minutes.  Grandma would have used a spoon or egg beater, but I use our electric mixer on medium for about a minute and on high for the rest of the time.  

Pour the batter into the pie shell and bake at 350º for fifty minutes.  Test for doneness with a butter knife inserted near the center of the pie.  If the knife comes out clean, the pie is done; otherwise, bake five minutes longer and test again.

NOTES:  Grandma told Mom that she could substitute any shortening for the butter.