Cherry Pie
Line a pie-tin with rich crust; nearly fill with the carefully seeded fruit, sweeten to taste, and sprinkle evenly with a tea-spoon corn-starch or a table-spoon flour, add a table-spoon of butter cut into small bits and scattered over the top; wet edge of crust, put on upper crust, and press the edges closely together, taking care to provide holes in the center for the escape of the air. Pies from blackberries, raspberries, etc., are all made in the same way, regulating the quantity of the sugar by the tartness of the fruit.
A working outline rather than a formula: the book assumes you know how much sugar a sour cherry needs and how hot your oven runs. The gaps are worth filling in before you start.
- QuantitiesA 9-inch pie takes about 4 to 5 cups of pitted cherries. For sour pie cherries, 1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar; for sweet cherries, 1/2 to 2/3 cup with a squeeze of lemon.
- ThickeningOne teaspoon of cornstarch is far too little for juicy cherries by modern expectation. Use 3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch or 1/3 cup flour tossed with the sugar and fruit, unless you want the looser, spoonable filling the small original quantity would give.
- "Rich crust"The recipe does not define it; take it as a pastry with a high proportion of fat, on the order of 1 part butter or lard to 2 parts flour by weight. Enough for a double crust: about 2 1/2 cups flour and 1 cup fat.
- OvenNo temperature is given, as few home ranges of the period could be set to one. Start at 425F for 20 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for 30 to 40 minutes, until the juices bubble thickly through the vents.
- Pie-tinA period tin was shallower than a modern deep-dish plate. A standard 9-inch metal or glass pan works; metal browns the bottom crust better, which matters with wet fruit.
- Sealing and ventingThe instruction to press the edges closely and cut holes in the center is the hinge. Cherry juice boils vigorously and will force any weak seam open, so crimp firmly and cut generous vents, not pinholes.
- RestingCool at least two hours before cutting. Cornstarch and flour fillings do not set until well below boiling, and a hot cherry pie runs out onto the plate.
- Other fruitsThe closing note holds up: blackberries and raspberries need the same treatment, though they release more liquid and benefit from the higher end of the thickener range.
Buckeye Cookery (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) came out of a Midwest where sour cherries were a dooryard crop, and the recipe's brevity reflects that: many readers would have had a Morello or Early Richmond tree and known its sourness by taste. The seeding was the labor, done by hand or with the cast-iron cherry stoners sold in this period. The scattering of butter over the fruit is an older practice, and the offer of "a tea-spoon corn-starch or a table-spoon flour" catches the moment when commercial cornstarch, manufactured in America from the early 1840s on, was still an alternative to flour rather than the default. Note too the practical assumption behind "regulating the quantity of the sugar by the tartness of the fruit" -- a household cooking what its own trees produced, not what a grocer graded.