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Dried Apple Pie
Very good pies may be made of the "Alden" dried apples, by stewing in a very little water; sweeten and make like any other. The home dried apples are best when stewed very soft, and mashed through a colander. When stewing put in two or three small pieces of lemon or orange peel (previously dried and saved for cooking purposes); flavor with a very little spice of any kind. Sweeten and season before putting into the pie-pan. A beaten egg may be stirred in. Bake with two crusts, rolled thin, and warm slightly before eating.
A frugal winter pie from the era when dried apples were the only apples left in the house by February. The original assumes you know what a fruit pie looks like, so the useful work is in the filling.
- Quantity to start withThe recipe gives none. Dried apples take up water and roughly double to triple in volume; about 6 oz (2 heaping cups) of dried slices is enough filling for a 9-inch double-crust pie.
- "A very little water"Barely cover the fruit and add more only as it drinks it up. The finished filling should mound on a spoon, not pour; too much liquid is the main reason dried-apple pies leak and go soggy underneath.
- Alden apples"Alden" was the name of a commercial evaporating process, and fruit sold under it was dried by heated air rather than sun: paler than kitchen-dried slices and quicker to soften, so it needed less cooking. Any modern bagged dried apple behaves much the same way. Home-dried or leathery farmers'-market rings are the ones the recipe wants stewed "very soft."
- Through a colanderThis means pressing the softened fruit through to leave skin and tough bits behind. A food mill or coarse sieve does it faster; a food processor gives a smoother purée than the period cook would have had, which is not a problem here.
- Dried citrus peelThe recipe assumes you have strips of lemon or orange peel dried and put by, as it says, "for cooking purposes." Use a two-inch strip of fresh zest instead, added while the fruit stews and fished out before filling the pan, or a scant teaspoon of grated zest left in.
- The eggOne beaten egg stirred into the cooled filling sets it lightly, so the slices cut clean instead of slumping. Let the stewed apple cool below hot before adding it or the egg curdles into threads.
- OvenThe book gives none. Bake at 425F for 15 minutes to set and colour the bottom crust, then 350F for 30 to 35 minutes until the top is browned. Vent the top crust.
- "Warm slightly before eating"Sound advice rather than an afterthought: the filling is dense and tastes flat cold. A few minutes in a 300F oven brings the spice and peel back.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six servings.
Dried apples were the standard of American home preservation before reliable canning: quartered or sliced fruit strung up or spread on trays in the sun, on the roof, or over the stove, and stored in sacks through the winter. The "Alden" apples named here were factory-evaporated fruit, sold under a drying process often associated with the Alden name, which used heated air currents rather than sun and produced lighter, cleaner-tasting fruit than most kitchens managed; that a community cookbook names a brand at all shows how quickly commercially processed food was entering ordinary pantries. The spice and the hoarded scraps of dried citrus peel are there for a reason -- dried apple stewed plain is sweet and dull, and cooks are said to have leaned on peel, nutmeg and cinnamon to give it back the brightness the drying took out.