Fruit Pies
Whatever the fresh fruit to be used in making pies, the procedure is the same.
First line a pie-plate with Flaky or Quick Pastry; strew this with a tablespoonful of fine dry bread or cracker crumbs and dot with a half tablespoonful of Snowdrift. Fill the plate with the cleaned berries, peaches, apples, cherries, or whatever fruit is to be used, mixed with from three-fourths to a cupful of sugar, to three cupfuls of fruit. Sprinkle with an additional tablespoonful of crumbs, add a teaspoonful of Snowdrift, put on the top crust, and finish according to the directions already given. 1½ Cupfuls Sugar
A master formula rather than a single pie: the crumb layer is the point, and everything else scales to it. The original assumes you have already read the pastry and finishing directions elsewhere in the book, so a few numbers need supplying.
- SnowdriftA brand of cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company; the book names it in nearly every line, which is the mark of a company-issued cookbook. Any solid vegetable shortening works, and butter gives more flavour, though it browns faster.
- Why the crumbsThis is the hinge. The bread or cracker crumbs strewn on the bottom crust absorb the juice fruit releases as it heats, which is what keeps the under-crust from turning to paste. Do not skip them or substitute flour without expecting a wetter pie.
- The stray sugar lineThe trailing "11½ Cupfuls Sugar" does not belong to the instructions and looks like a stray fragment of surrounding page matter. Follow the body text: three-quarters to one cup of sugar per three cups of fruit.
- Sugar by fruitThree-quarters of a cup suits ripe peaches, sweet cherries and most apples; the full cup belongs to sour cherries, gooseberries and other markedly tart fruit. Taste the raw fruit and decide.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature, referring the cook to the finishing directions printed elsewhere in the book. As modern guidance: bake at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set and brown the pastry, then drop to 350F for 35 to 45 minutes, until juice bubbles thickly through the vents.
- ThickeningThis recipe uses no thickener beyond the crumbs and reduction, so the filling will be loose. If you want a sliceable wedge, add a tablespoon or two of cornstarch or three of flour to the sugar, and expect a firmer, less bright-tasting filling.
- Pie plate and yieldPie plates of the era ran roughly eight to ten inches and were shallower than a modern deep dish; three cups of fruit fills a standard plate and serves about six. For a deep-dish pan, use four to five cups and increase the crumbs proportionally.
- CoolingCut hot and the filling runs. Two hours at room temperature lets the juices set as far as they are going to.
Snowdrift was one of the earliest widely advertised vegetable shortenings in the United States, produced from cottonseed oil by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and this book is a promotional cookbook of the sort that companies distributed by the hundred thousand in the first decades of the twentieth century to persuade cooks away from lard and butter. The habit of naming the brand in every line is a reliable marker of the genre. The crumb trick, by contrast, is much older kitchen wisdom, often said to appear in nineteenth-century American and English pie instructions long before shortening was sold in tins: a dry, absorbent layer between pastry and wet fruit was the standard defence against a soggy bottom. The recipe's structure is a single procedure covering berries, peaches, apples and cherries alike.