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The regional table / South Dakota

Sour Cream Raisin Pie

Published September 23, 2026 · South Dakota

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The meringue goes onto filling that is still steaming, and everything people hate about this pie happens when it does not.

South Dakota has one document that no other state can match on this pie, and it is worth printing before the argument starts. The Beresford Republic of Thursday 13 September 1956 carried a single column on its front page under the headline "HAWARDEN WOMAN BAKES TOP PIE": "The South Dakota Farm Bureau's 1956 pie baking queen was crowned at Huron last Friday. Mrs. Lloyd Lundeen of Hawarden, representing Union county, took honors in the state sour cream raisin pie contest at the state fair." Second place went to Mrs. Joe Eliason of Gettysburg and third to a woman from Yale whose surname the scan will not give up cleanly; the queen was crowned by Lieutenant Governor Roy Houck, and the top three took merchandise awards. Ten years later the same paper reprinted the item in its "Ten Years Ago From The Republic Files" column, and that reprint is where the thing gets its proper name in capitals: "the State Sour Cream Raisin Pie Contest at the State Fair". A state fair contest with a crowned queen, a lieutenant governor and a county delegation is about as institutional as a pie ever gets. Note who won it, though. Hawarden is in Iowa, which the same page of the same issue establishes without being asked: three columns over, a soil conservation story lists its winners as "William Kennedy, Hawarden, Ia., Stanley Anderson, Akron, Ia., and Arnold Peterson, Alcester". South Dakota's state pie queen came from across the Big Sioux and represented a South Dakota county, which is the whole problem with this pie in one sentence.

Because the pie is not South Dakota's invention, and the record is blunt about it. The earliest print I could reach is the North Georgia Citizen of Dalton, Georgia, 3 June 1909 — a reader-exchange column of recipes signed with initials and a state — and it reads: "Sour Cream Raisin Pie. To 1 cup sour cream add 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1 cup seeded raisins and 1 tablespoonful flour", then "Bake between two crusts". It is credited to "Mrs. H. J. H., Col." — Colorado, not the plains, and baked between two crusts with no meringue anywhere near it. The same paper ran it again on 1 July and 5 August that year. By 1949 it was national promotional copy: a syndicated column under the Betty Barclay byline in the Savannah Tribune of 23 June built it on Grape-Nuts in a baked shell. In 1950 two Nebraska papers printed two different versions within three months, The Frontier of O'Neill on 6 July and The Voice of Lincoln on 5 October. And the absences next door are as telling as the hits: the Clay County papers digitised at Vermillion from 1862 onward return not one instance of the phrase, against 127 for pumpkin pie and 51 for church supper, and Beresford's own run from 1897 to 2018 has raisin pie in 1918, 1919, 1925 and 1926 and never sour cream raisin pie before that 1956 contest. So this is an upper Midwest and farm-press pie that South Dakota institutionalised rather than invented, and the site would rather say that than crown it. The quantities below were worked out for this page.

Why this version works

More cornstarch than a milk custard needs. Two things are working against a clean slice here. The sour cream brings acid, which thins a starch-bound filling as it cooks, and the raisins go on giving up liquid as the pie cools. A quarter cup of cornstarch in a nine-inch pie looks excessive in the bowl and is exactly right on the plate.

The raisins are plumped in the pan, not in the pie. US Grade A seedless raisins may carry "not more than 18 percent, by weight, of moisture" under 7 CFR 52.1846, and USDA's composition record for dark seedless puts them at 15.5 grams of water and 65.2 grams of sugar per hundred. Dropped dry into a finished custard they pull their water straight out of it and you get a stiff, dull filling. Ten minutes in simmering water first and they take it from the pan instead.

The meringue goes onto hot filling, and bakes hot and short. University of Missouri Extension Circular 670 of May 1957 is flat about it: "Meringues baked on hot fillings cook more evenly and are less likely to 'weep' than those baked on a cold pie", and "Baking at 425 to 450° F for 5 minutes seems to be more of a protection against leakage than baking at lower heat a longer time, as many recipes recommend." The same page blames the other fault on the other extreme — "Beading may result from too long cooking."

Sour cream is an acid ingredient, and federal law says how acid. The standard of identity at 21 CFR 131.160 says sour cream "results from the souring, by lactic acid producing bacteria, of pasteurized cream", carries not less than 18 percent milkfat, and "has a titratable acidity of not less than 0.5 percent, calculated as lactic acid". That half a percent is why this custard is not a vanilla cream pie with cream swapped in: acid and heat together will split it if you let it boil, so it cooks at a bare bubble and the starch goes in before the heat does.

Ingredient notes

Eggs: four, separated, and the whites want to be out of the fridge while the custard cooks. Yolks thicken and whites build the meringue, so nothing is left over. Get a speck of yolk into the whites and the meringue will not climb; separate each white into a cup before it joins the others.

Crust: one nine-inch shell, fully blind-baked and cooled. This filling is poured in cooked, so the crust gets no further help from the oven except the five minutes under the meringue. An underbaked shell here is a wet shell for the life of the pie.

Raisins: a cup and a half of dark seedless. The federal standard describes processed raisins as "dried grapes of the Vinifera varieties" and grades the good ones "well-matured", meaning "full-fleshed, may have fine wrinkles and are rounded in appearance". That is what you want and it is visible through the bag: rounded and pliable, not hard little angular ones, which are graded down for a reason and will stay hard in the pie.

Sour cream: a pound and a half, full fat, and read the tub. The name on a legal sour cream is "Sour cream" or "Cultured sour cream"; light and reduced-fat versions are standardised separately and carry gums to hold them together. USDA's two records for full-fat sour cream put it at 19.4 and 18.0 grams of fat per hundred — the second sitting exactly on the legal floor — so the brand you buy really does change the richness of the slice.

Step by step

  1. Blind-bake the shell. Line the chilled shell with foil and pie weights, bake at 400°F for 18 minutes, lift out the weights and bake 8 to 10 minutes more, until the base is dry and coloured. Leave it on a rack. It must be properly done now, because nothing later will dry it.
  2. Plump the raisins. Simmer the raisins in the water in a small pan for 10 minutes, until they are rounded and the water has gone syrupy and nearly away. Take the pan off the heat and leave them in what liquid is left. Do not drain them.
  3. Mix the filling cold. In a heavy saucepan off the heat, whisk the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt together, then whisk in the sour cream and the egg yolks until there is not a streak of yolk left. Starch and acid have to be evenly distributed before either meets heat.
  4. Cook it slowly. Set the pan over medium-low and stir constantly with a flat-ended spatula, right into the corners. It will thicken suddenly at about 8 minutes. Let it bubble slowly for 2 minutes more, no harder than the occasional heavy blip, then take it off and stir in the raisins with their syrup, the butter and the vanilla.
  5. Fill the shell and keep it hot. Scrape the filling into the baked shell and smooth it. Heat the oven to 425°F. From here on the filling must not be allowed to cool — that five-minute gap is the one the extension circular warns about.
  6. Beat the meringue. Beat the whites with the cream of tartar and salt to soft peaks, then add the sugar a tablespoon at a time, beating until it is stiff, glossy and not grainy between your fingers — about 4 minutes in all.
  7. Seal and bake hot and short. Spread the meringue over the steaming filling, working from the edge inward so it touches the crust all the way round with no gap, then swirl the middle. Bake at 425°F for 5 minutes, until the peaks are brown and the valleys gold. Cool on a rack away from a draught for 3 hours before cutting.
A puddle under the meringue means it went onto filling that had cooled, and the only real cure is the next pie. Amber beads on the surface are the opposite fault — too long in the oven — and they are cosmetic: blot them with a paper towel and cut the pie. If the custard broke in the pan and looks curdled, it boiled: take it off the heat at once and beat it hard with a whisk for thirty seconds, which brings most of it back, and pour it in anyway rather than starting again. A filling that will not thicken has not reached a real bubble; return it to the heat and keep stirring rather than adding more starch.

Storage and make-ahead

The pie keeps 3 days in the fridge, loosely tented rather than wrapped, and it is best on the first day. Meringue weeps a little in cold storage no matter what you did, so expect a thin layer under it by the second morning and pour it off before cutting.

It does not freeze. The starch-bound custard weeps badly on thawing and the meringue collapses to a skin. If you want it ahead, bake the shell up to two days early and keep it at room temperature under a cloth, then cook the filling and the meringue on the day.

What to serve with it

Coffee, black and too hot, which is what it was eaten with in every café that sold it by the slice. If it is finishing a supper rather than holding up an afternoon, keep everything before it plain and savoury — a roast, boiled potatoes, something pickled — because a cup of sour cream and a cup and a half of sugar do not want a rich course ahead of them.

From the recipe box / South Dakota

Sour Cream Raisin Pie

A cooked custard of sour cream, sugar, yolks and spice, thick with plumped raisins, poured hot into a baked shell and sealed under meringue — the pie South Dakota gave a state contest and a crowned queen.

Prep
30 min
Cook
45 min
Total
4 hr 15 min
Serves
8
Calories
565 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Blind-bake the shell at 400°F, 18 minutes with weights and 8–10 minutes without, until dry and coloured. Cool on a rack.
  2. Simmer the raisins in the water 10 minutes, until plump and the liquid is syrupy. Leave them in the pan undrained.
  3. Off the heat in a heavy saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt, then whisk in the sour cream and egg yolks until smooth.
  4. Cook over medium-low, stirring constantly, about 8 minutes to thicken, then 2 minutes at a slow bubble. Off the heat, stir in the raisins with their syrup, the butter and the vanilla.
  5. Scrape the filling into the baked shell, smooth the top, and heat the oven to 425°F. Do not let the filling cool.
  6. Beat the whites with cream of tartar and salt to soft peaks, add the ½ cup sugar a tablespoon at a time, and beat to stiff, glossy peaks, about 4 minutes.
  7. Spread the meringue over the hot filling, sealing it to the crust all the way round, and bake 5 minutes at 425°F. Cool 3 hours on a rack before cutting.

Nutrition

Fat25 g (14 g saturated)
Sodium280 mg
Protein7 g
Serving1 slice, one-eighth of a 9-inch pie
Calories565
Cholesterol155 mg
Carbohydrates80 g (57 g sugar, 2 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Can I make it a day ahead?

You can, and it will be a slightly worse pie. Meringue on a refrigerated custard weeps over several hours no matter how it was baked, which is why the federal sour cream standard itself allows ingredients to "prevent syneresis" in the tub. Bake the shell ahead if you want a head start; cook the filling and the meringue the same day and give the pie its three hours on the counter rather than in the fridge.

Is this really a South Dakota pie?

South Dakota gave it a state contest, which no other state is documented to have done: the Farm Bureau ran a state sour cream raisin pie contest at the state fair in 1956 and crowned a pie baking queen for it. The recipe itself is older and wider — in print in 1909 from a Colorado cook, syndicated nationally by 1949, in two Nebraska papers in 1950 — so the honest description is an upper Midwest pie that South Dakota made official, not a South Dakota invention.

Can I use flour instead of cornstarch?

Yes, and the old printed versions all do — the 1909 recipe uses a single tablespoonful of flour for a whole pie. Use three tablespoons of flour for each tablespoon of cornstarch, cook it two minutes longer to lose the raw taste, and accept a softer, cloudier slice. Cornstarch sets clearer and firmer, which matters in a pie this wet.

Why did my meringue weep, and why did it bead?

Those are two different faults with opposite causes, and the 1957 Missouri extension circular names both. Weeping — the watery layer between meringue and filling — comes from spreading it on filling that has cooled, so the underside never cooks. Beading — amber droplets on top — comes from too long in the oven. Hot filling and five minutes at 425°F is the answer to both at once.