Home › The Principles of Cookery › Rhubarb Pie
Rhubarb Pie
Peel the rhubarb, and if it is very large divide it into two or three strips, and then into short lengths. Fill the dish as full as possible, sprinkle some sugar over it, add a small pinch of salt, and, if liked, mix with the fruit a flavouring of grated lemon-peel and ground ginger, or a little nutmeg, grated. Line the edges of the dish with pastry, moisten these with water, and lay a cover of pastry over all. Press the edges closely together and ornament them, then sprinkle a spoonful or two of cold water over the pie and dredge a little white sugar upon it; bake the pie in a well-heated oven until the pastry loosens from the dish. Serve either hot or cold. Time to bake, half an hour to one hour, according to size.
An English deep-dish fruit pie: a single sheet of pastry over a filled dish, no bottom crust. The original assumes you already know how much sugar to use and what a full pie dish looks like, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- Only the stalksRhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid and should never go into the dish; trim them off and discard them. The same applies to any leafy scrap left at the top of a stalk.
- Peeling is usually unnecessaryField-grown summer rhubarb can be stringy enough to warrant a light peel, as directed here. Thin forced or early spring stalks need only trimming and cutting into 1-inch lengths.
- Sugar, unstatedFor about 1½ lb of prepared rhubarb, 3/4 to 1 cup of sugar is the usual modern range; tart stalks take the upper end. Note that the pinch of salt is called for outright here, unlike the spices, which are offered 'if liked'; a little salt sharpens the fruit.
- "Well-heated oven"No temperature is given; the recipe relies on the doneness cue instead. As a modern starting point, something around 425F for the first 15 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then 375F for the remainder, works well; a single high heat held for an hour risks darkening the lid before the fruit has collapsed.
- The dish mattersThis wants a deep pie dish with a broad rim — the pastry strip laid on the moistened edge is what anchors the lid. A shallow modern pie plate gives too little depth and the filling will boil over.
- Expect a lot of juiceThere is no flour, cornstarch or tapioca here, which is period-correct: the result is fruit in thin syrup under a crisp lid, not a sliceable American-style pie. If you want it thicker, toss the rhubarb with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, and know you are departing from the recipe.
- A pie funnel or a ventCut two or three steam slits in the lid, or stand a pie funnel in the centre. Sealed pastry over wet fruit lifts and splits.
- Water and sugar on topThat spoonful of cold water plus a dredge of sugar is a common period finish — it produces a crackled, frosted crust. Milk or beaten egg gives a shinier, browner finish if you prefer it.
- Doneness and yieldThe cue given — pastry loosening from the dish — is sound, and the fruit should be bubbling at the vents. A standard 1½-quart dish serves six, with cream or custard.
Rhubarb reached British kitchens as a medicinal root long before it was eaten: the dried rhizome was a valued purgative, imported through Russia and Turkey, and the stalks were not much used as a food until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary the plant was well established in English gardens, and forcing was practised; the Yorkshire forced-rhubarb trade around Leeds and Wakefield developed over the later nineteenth century. Rhubarb was valued as the first "fruit" of the year, arriving in spring before gooseberries and currants. The ginger, nutmeg and lemon peel offered here are the sort of warming flavourings often paired with a sharp, watery stalk, though the recipe itself gives no reason for them and marks them optional. The construction, pastry over a heaped dish with no base, is the ordinary English fruit pie of the period, and the recipe does say it may be served either hot or cold.