Egg Custard Pie

Frank Anderson may not have realized it at the time, but he pretty much put the little town of Beebe, Arkansas, on the map when he and his wife, Margaret, opened Anderson’s Grill there, at the junction of U.S. Highways 64 and 67, in 1953. The tiny little place the Andersons built next to the motel they owned next door—the Bel-Mar, which they billed as “the friendliest stop in the South”—was too small almost from the beginning, but in time it would grow into a 9,000-square-foot seafood house that introduced much of Arkansas to fresh Gulf Coast fish and shrimp.

When Frank died in 1957, Margaret and her son Bruce took over the restaurant. But later Bruce turned to his attention to the much bigger market in Little Rock, where in 1974 he opened the hugely successful Cajun’s Wharf on the Arkansas River and in 1980 added Shorty Small’s Bar and Grill—the latter establishment named, he said, for a colorful character he knew while growing up in Beebe.

Anderson’s Restaurant was destroyed by fire on September 16, 1985, and never reopened. Two and a half months later the restaurant’s insurer, Missouri-based Transit Casualty Company, was declared insolvent in what was called “the Titanic of all insolvencies.” Anderson sued the restaurant’s insurance broker for more than $2.6 million in damages, alleging that it had failed to provide a reliable insurance company for the restaurant. Soon, with his health failing, Anderson began to sell off his other restaurant properties, and he died in 1992 at age 57.

From the beginning Anderson’s Restaurant was best known for its pies, which were baked over the years by Alberta Plummer and Carrie Pruitt. The most popular were lemon meringue, chocolate, coconut, and egg custard, the recipe for which follows.

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Egg Custard Pie

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From the time it opened in 1953, Anderson's Restaurant in Beebe, Arkansas, was known for the pies that Alberta Plummer and Carrie Pruitt turned out by the thousands—among them lemon meringue, chocolate, coconut, and this incredibly luscious Egg Custard Pie.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 5 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 (9-inch) pie shell, unbaked
• Ground nutmeg

Instructions

1

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and salt. Beat in eggs. Add milk and vanilla until mixture is smooth.

3

Pour into pie shell and sprinkle nutmeg over top. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until filling is firm. (A knife inserted in center of filling should come out clean.)