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FRUIT PIE (for invalids)
The rich crusts usually made for fruit tarts are highly indigestible, and should not be eaten by delicate persons. As a light substitute for pastry, the following recipe will be found useful. Cover the bottom of a pie-dish with rather thick slices of spongecake. If small ones be used, make only two slices of them, and lay the brown part downwards in the dish. Fill up with any seasonable fruit, and strew amongst it as much fine sugar as will be required to sweeten. Pour in water nearly even with the fruit, and make a cover with the remaining slices of spongecake. Bake in a moderate oven for forty minutes. Sufficient for five or six persons.
An inverted pie: sponge cake stands in for pastry both below and above the fruit, soaking up the juices as it bakes. The whole thing depends on the cake being stale and firm enough to hold together once wetted.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is conventionally reckoned at about 350F (175C), though the book itself gives no temperatures. Forty minutes at that heat should cook down most soft fruit; firm fruit such as apple or quince is best sliced thin, or the cake will be sodden before the filling is tender.
- Use stale spongeUse firm sponge -- The recipe says only "rather thick slices". Fresh, very moist sponge is likely to go to paste once wetted, so day-old plain sponge cut in thick slices is the safer choice. Trimmed pound cake would serve in the same way.
- Why the brown side goes downThe recipe directs that the browned outside of a small cake be laid face down in the dish; it gives no reason, though a baked crust plausibly stands up to the juice better than the open crumb.
- The dishA Victorian "pie-dish" is an oval or round earthenware dish; the recipe gives no size, but it needs to hold enough for five or six and to be deep enough that the fruit does not boil over the sponge lid.
- Sugar and waterNo quantities are given because the fruit dictates them: sweeten to taste, less for ripe berries, more for gooseberries or rhubarb. "Water nearly even with the fruit" means enough to come almost to the top of the fruit in whatever dish is used, so the volume depends on the dish.
- Seasonable fruitThe recipe says only "any seasonable fruit"; rhubarb, gooseberries, currants, plums, damsons and apples would all fit the description. Use only the rhubarb stalks — the leaves are not edible. Frozen fruit works, but drain it or the sponge will flood.
- ServingFive or six portions, as stated. Serve warm rather than hot; the sponge sets slightly on cooling and lifts out in wedges instead of falling apart.
Cassell's places this among its invalid cookery, a substantial category in late-Victorian household books, where the sick were fed from a distinct repertoire of gruels, beef teas, arrowroot puddings and lightly sweetened fruit. The reasoning behind it is the era's conviction that rich pastry was "indigestible" — a judgement based on how heavily suet and lard crusts sat on the stomach rather than on any modern nutritional analysis, though the general point that a fat-laden short crust is harder work than plain cake is fair enough. Sponge cake was a natural substitute, and Victorian frugality found many uses for it: trifle, charlottes, cabinet puddings and this — all of them relying on a starchy layer to absorb juice that pastry would only be spoiled by.