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Dried-Peach Pie
Stew peaches until perfectly soft, mash fine, and add, for two pies, half tea-cup sweet cream, and one tea-cup sugar; bake with two crusts. Or, omit cream, and add half tea-cup boiling water, and butter size of a hickory-nut.
A winter pie from the era when dried fruit was the only fruit between October and June. The original assumes you already know how much dried peach to start with, so that is the first thing to settle.
- Quantity is not givenThe recipe never says how many peaches. For two 9-inch double-crust pies, figure roughly a pound of dried peach halves total, which will swell to about six cups stewed. Any published conversion here is a reconstruction, not the original instruction.
- Soak before stewingModern dried peaches vary from leathery to nearly soft. Cover with water and soak several hours or overnight, then stew in the soaking liquid until they collapse. "Perfectly soft" is the operative phrase: undercooked dried fruit keeps drawing moisture out of the filling in the oven and leaves the pie dry.
- Tea-cupA period tea-cup is smaller than a modern measuring cup; it is usually reckoned at about six fluid ounces, or three-quarters of a cup, though the book does not define the term. On that reckoning half a tea-cup of cream is roughly 6 tablespoons, and a tea-cup of sugar about 3/4 cup, split between two pies.
- Sweet creamThis means fresh, unsoured cream, in contrast to the sour cream and "loppered" milk that period kitchens also cooked with. Heavy cream is the right substitute. It is not whipped and not scalded, just stirred into the mashed fruit.
- Butter size of a hickory-nutAbout a tablespoon, dotted over or stirred into the filling in the cream-free version. The half tea-cup of boiling water in that variant is there to loosen the mash, since without cream the fruit sets up stiff.
- Drain before you fillMashed stewed peaches carry a lot of free liquid. Drain the pulp well before sweetening, or the bottom crust will not set. Reserved syrup can be boiled down and stirred back in for flavor without the water.
- OvenBake at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 35 minutes until the top is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents. Period recipes say only "bake"; a double-crust fruit pie of this kind wants that hot start.
- SeasoningDried peaches are tart and concentrated. A pinch of salt, and cinnamon or a spoonful of lemon juice if you like, are consistent with the period and keep the filling from tasting flatly sweet.
- YieldThe recipe says two pies; assuming modern 9-inch tins, that is two double-crust pies. Halve everything for a single pie.
Drying was the cheapest way an inland household preserved stone fruit before home canning became common, and Ohio in the 1870s dried peaches by the bushel: halved, pitted, spread on boards or scaffolds in the sun. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, compiled in Marysville, Ohio and first published in 1877, was written for exactly that kind of kitchen, where the pastry chapter had to cover the whole year and fresh fruit filled only a few weeks of it. The two versions given here are a fair picture of rural economy: cream if the cow was giving, boiling water and a knob of butter if she was not. The measure "butter the size of a hickory-nut" is itself a period marker, one of a family of nut-and-egg measures.