Brandy Alexander Pie

In January 1970, The Times published a recipe for brandy Alexander pie. It was an unassuming confection: a graham-cracker crust filled with a wobbly, creamy mousse and enough alcohol to raise the hair on your neck and then make your neck wobbly too. Later that year, Craig Claiborne, then the food editor, declared it one of the paper’s three most-requested dessert recipes and ran it again. By rights, this should have been the recipe’s swan song.

But thanks to Dick Taeuber, a Maryland statistician, the pie lived on. Taeuber discovered that you could use a simple formula to make the pie in the flavor of almost any cocktail you wanted (3 eggs to 1 cup cream to ½ cup liquor). In 1975, Claiborne renamed it Dick Taeuber’s cordial pie and published it once more, this time with all 20 variations (see note).

Calling it a cordial pie doesn’t quite capture its punch or proof. Booze pie would be more fitting. It’s not the kind of thing you want to serve for a children’s birthday party.

—Amanda Hesser

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References:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/19434/brandy-alexander-pie/

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11205-dick-taeubers-brandy-alexander-pie

Equipment:

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Ingredients:

• 1½cups graham-cracker crumbs

• ⅓cup melted butter

• 1 envelope unflavored gelatin

• ⅔cup sugar

• teaspoon salt

• 3eggs, separated

• ¼cup Cognac

• ¼cup creme de cacao

• 1cup heavy cream

• Food coloring (optional)

• Chocolate curls, for garnish

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Instructions:

1. Step 1

   Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the crumbs with butter. Form in a 9-inch pan and bake for 10 minutes. Cool.

2. Step 2

   Pour ½ cup cold water in a saucepan and sprinkle gelatin over it. Add ⅓ cup sugar, salt and egg yolks. Stir to blend. Place over low heat and stir until the gelatin dissolves and the mixture thickens. Do not boil. Remove from heat.

3. Step 3

   Stir the Cognac and creme de cacao into the mixture. Then chill until the mixture starts to mound slightly when nudged with a spoon.

4. Step 4

   Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the remaining ⅓ cup sugar and beat until peaks are firm. Fold the meringue into the thickened mixture.

5. Step 5

   Whip the cream, then fold into the mixture. Add food coloring if desired. Turn the mixture into the crust. Add garnish, if desired. Chill several hours or overnight.

Plating Instructions

Tasting Journal

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