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Lemon Raisin Pie
One cup of chopped raisins (seeded), the juice and grated rind of one lemon, one cup of cold water, one tablespoon of flour, one cup of sugar, two tablespoons of butter. Stir lightly together and bake with upper and under crust.
— Mrs. Zobles T. Cater
A one-bowl filling for a double-crust pie, of the type that relied on pantry staples rather than fresh fruit. The instructions assume a cook who already knows her pastry, so the gaps are all in the baking.
- Pan size and yieldThe quantities fill a standard 8- or 9-inch pie plate, which cuts into six or seven slices. In a 9-inch plate the filling will be shallow; an 8-inch gives a better proportion of filling to crust.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A workable modern schedule: start hot, around 425F, for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 35 minutes until the filling bubbles through the vents.
- The flour is the whole structureOne tablespoon of flour to a cup of water and a cup of sugar is a loose bind by modern standards. Whisk the flour into the sugar before adding any liquid, or it will lump; the filling should still be slightly wobbly out of the oven and will firm as it cools.
- Cool it completelyCut warm, this pie runs. Give it at least three hours at room temperature so the starch fully sets.
- Seeded raisins'Seeded' here means the seeds had been removed, whether by the cook or before sale; raisins were commonly sold with seeds in. Modern seedless raisins need only chopping — a coarse chop by knife or a few pulses in a processor, not a paste.
- ButterThe recipe stirs the two tablespoons of butter in with everything else. Cutting it into bits and dotting it over the filling instead is a common alternative, though it departs from the instruction as written.
- LemonGrate the zest before juicing, and grate only the yellow. One lemon gives roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice; if yours is small, make it up to 3 tablespoons or the sugar will dominate.
- VentingA sealed top crust over a wet, sugary filling will lift and split. Cut steam vents and crimp the edges firmly.
Raisin pie was the winter pie of the American countryside — dried fruit kept in the cellar all season when fresh apples ran out and nothing else was in the house. It appears in nineteenth-century American cookbooks under several names, including the funeral pie of Pennsylvania German kitchens, a name often said to come from the fact that it could be assembled from shelf goods on short notice for a large gathering, though the explanation is traditional rather than documented. The lemon here is the flourish: citrus still counted as something bought rather than kept, and its acid does real work against a filling that is otherwise a cup of sugar and a cup of raisins. The attribution to a named village woman is typical of community cookbooks of the period, which were compiled as fundraisers by church societies and reading circles, each contributor signing her household's version.