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Peach Pie
Line a dish with a good crust. Then place in it a single layer of peaches, cut in halves; sprinkle sugar over them, and pour on enough sweet cream to fill the dish, and bake. Use no upper crust. "Homely" Pie. - Take one cup of molasses, one cup of good vinegar, one cup of water, one small spoonful of extract of lemon and a piece of butter the size of a hen's egg. Let it all come to a boil and thicken it with corn starch. This makes two pies. Don't put on a top crust, but lay strips of the paste on, as there is danger of its foaming over.
Two open-faced pies share this entry: a cream-and-peach custard, and a molasses "vinegar pie" of the sort made when fruit ran out. Both are workable, but the second gives no thickening quantity and needs judgment.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" means unsoured, as opposed to the sour cream and clabbered milk also kept in the house. Use heavy or whipping cream; the pie sets as a loose custard, so anything lighter will stay soupy.
- Oven heatThe book assumes you know the setting. Start at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the cream is just set with a slight wobble at the centre.
- PeachesCut side up, packed close in a single layer, skins removed. Freestone peaches halve cleanly; clingstones do not. Two to three tablespoons of sugar is right for ripe fruit, more for underripe.
- The lining dishA 9-inch plate takes roughly six to eight peach halves in a single layer, and something in the range of one to two cups of cream depending on the depth of the dish. Fill only to just below the crust rim, since the filling rises slightly before it sets.
- Butter the size of a hen's eggConventionally read as about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons, though the measure was inevitably approximate.
- Cornstarch, unstatedThe original leaves the amount to the cook. For roughly three cups of liquid, 4 to 5 tablespoons slaked in cold water will give a filling firm enough to slice; add it off the boil, then return to a simmer for a minute to cook out the raw starch.
- Why no top crustThe molasses filling foams up as it bakes, and a sealed lid traps steam until it bursts; the recipe says so outright. Strips of pastry laid across let it vent. The peach pie is also directed to have no upper crust, though the text gives no reason.
- YieldThe peach pie makes one 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. The molasses filling, as the text says, fills two shells; bake them at 375F until the strips are browned and the filling is set at the edges.
"Homely" pie belongs to the family of vinegar and molasses pies found in nineteenth-century American kitchens: a mock-fruit filling built from pantry staples when no fruit was to be had, the vinegar and lemon extract supplying the sharpness that apples or cherries would otherwise provide. Related versions appear under the names vinegar pie, cider pie and mock apple pie, and the family is generally associated with rural households where preserved fruit ran out before the next harvest. The peach pie, by contrast, is a straight cream filling poured over fresh fruit and baked without a lid. Placing the two side by side shows a cook expected to work with the season rather than against it.