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Blueberry Pie
Line a deep perforated tin with Crisco Plain Pastry; brush over with water or white of egg. Fill with floured blueberries; add sugar, Crisco, salt and vinegar. Allow 1 cup sugar to 3 cups berries, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon vinegar. Cover with crust and bake.
A terse Crisco-era formula that assumes you already know the book's pastry recipe and your own oven. The proportions are sound; the missing pieces are temperature, time and thickener quantity.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or time is given at all; the recipe says only 'bake.' As a modern starting point, 425F for 15 minutes to set and brown the bottom crust, then 350F for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the juices bubble thickly through the vents.
- The perforated tinA deep pie tin punched with small holes, promoted for letting steam escape so the bottom crust would crisp. A standard 9-inch metal or glass pie plate works; metal or glass browns the base better than ceramic.
- Brush the shell firstA thin film of egg white or water on the raw bottom crust, left to dry a minute before filling, helps keep blueberry juice from soaking through. Egg white is generally reckoned the more effective of the two.
- "Floured blueberries"The recipe never says how much. For 3 cups of berries, toss with 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour; frozen berries, which throw more liquid, want closer to 4. Without it the filling runs the moment you cut the pie.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, still on shelves though reformulated over the decades to remove trans fats. The tablespoon dotted over the fruit is for richness and can be butter instead; in the pastry, shortening gives the more tender crust and butter the better flavor.
- The half teaspoon of vinegarNot a mistake and not enough to taste. The recipe says only 'vinegar'; a mild one such as cider vinegar sharpens berries that have gone flat and sweet, the same role lemon juice plays in later recipes. Lemon juice substitutes directly.
- Vent and sealCut steam slits in the top crust and crimp the edges firmly. A perforated tin vents the base, not the lid.
- Yield and coolingProbably one deep pie of about 9 inches, 6 to 8 servings, though the recipe gives no yield and states the fruit only as a ratio. Cool at least three hours before cutting; the starch will not set while hot and the slices will collapse.
This comes from a Procter & Gamble promotional cookbook, one of a genre that flourished after Crisco was introduced in 1911 as one of the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortenings. Such books were written to demonstrate that the new fat could do everything lard and butter did, which likely explains why the brand name appears inside the instructions rather than in a list of ingredients, and why even the fruit filling gets a spoonful of it. The perforated pie tin and the egg-white glaze belong to an older tradition of American fruit pie baking, where a soggy under-crust was a standing complaint. Blueberry pie itself is closely tied to the Northeast and the Maritimes, where wild lowbush berries were gathered in quantity in late summer; the vinegar here does the work of the lemon that later recipes usually call for, and may reflect a kitchen where lemons were less reliably at hand than a jug of vinegar.