I have been waiting to write this one for months. What you are looking at is a sour cream pie made from a recipe that was provided by the Pittock Mansion in Portland Oregon. I will admit that the crust was purchased. I haven’t attempted it a ton of times but the ones that I have have not come out very well and I just didn’t leave myself room for error on this one.

One of the stops on our mid-June summer tour was a day in Portland. We had to do all the usual tourist things like visit the Japanese Garden and the Pittock Mansion (which are all adjacent to each other). At the mansion, you get to tour the house and one of the stops was the kitchen. I picked up this recipe card base on an old family story as something to try.

With the links provided, you can read all the history better than I can summarize in one paragraph. But, just for context I will say that the Pittock mansion was built by the successful owner/promoter of “The Oregonian” (Portland OR) newspaper. He wasn’t the founder but the second owner that made it successful. In the period of the 1880’s Pittock became wildly successful on the domination of the newspaper. As a result, he built his family a home reflective of his success. There is a lot more to the story but this at least sets the stage for why and how so much is known like this recipe and why it is so interesting to see this home.

We have an annual family reunion that follows my paternal, great grandmother’s line. About ten years ago, I heard a story from my great-uncle (grandfather’s brother). He said that one time my great grandmother, his mother had made a sour cream pie and set it on the porch to cool. She was a fabulous pie maker having worked in restaurants making pies for years. This is why I get embarrassed to make pie crusts because I cannot compete. But, what is worse, a crappy crust or one that is purchased?

While the pie was cooling my grandfather was out, probably working. By the time he got home my grandmother and great-aunt had eaten the entire pie. When my grandfather found out, he was mad. The story goes that every time the story came up he got mad. This was all news to me but I remember listening to the story and my great uncle just laughing and laughing. I thought that it would be fun to attempt a sour cream pie for this year’s family reunion as an homage to my grandfather who has been dead over thirty years now.

It turns out that there is more to this story. When the old timers were around at the family reunion, sour cream pie was something somebody always made. I had only heard about the pie and not the tradition, so it must have pre-dated me (fifty-ish years). My aunt asked me if I had put raisins or not. I said raisins and she said that was the best version and had not had it in years.

On the recipe card, there were three different versions of the pie. I happened to get lucky and pick the one that had raisins. The meringue is also optional. Because the pie itself uses egg yolks only, it seems like a no brainer to use the whites in meringue. So, that is why my pie got it as well.

I also want to said that I don’t think that the recipe card is really intended to be used as such. It is really an ingredient card. I had to do some research about how to put the ingredients together and what temperature to bake and so on. This is not to mention that I think the card were provided as momentos and focused on the historical record rather than the practical tradition. Nevertheless, I think it was still pretty cool.

End Your Programming Routine: When my dad was a child, his family used to live close and spend time with many of these people. I on the other hand saw them once a year if they felt like attending the event. I don’t have any sort of real relationship or even name/face recognition. All that being said, it makes me happy to make a link between today and the origins with a recipe. I did enjoy the pie but more because of the story.