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Rhubarb Pie
Two cups of rhubarb cut fine, one cup of sugar, one egg, one tablespoon of flour. Mix well together for filling for pie.
— Mrs. Charles Deer
A community-cookbook filling receipt of the barest kind: it gives proportions and assumes you already know how to build and bake a pie. Everything below is what the original leaves unsaid.
- What you getTwo cups of rhubarb is a scant filling by modern standards, enough for a shallow pie at most. If you want a deep, mounded pie, double it and use a top crust.
- CrustNo crust is specified. A double crust or a lattice suits it; the filling is loose and wet, so a bottom shell alone will slump. Chill the assembled pie before it goes in the oven.
- OvenStart at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for 35 to 45 minutes, until the juices bubble thickly through the vents. Rhubarb pie is done when it boils, not merely when the crust colors.
- One tablespoon of flour is not muchWith two cups of rhubarb this thickens to a syrup rather than a sliceable set. If you want clean wedges, use 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour, or a tablespoon of cornstarch or tapioca, and let the pie cool completely before cutting.
- The eggThe egg here is a binder, and it gives the filling a faint custard body that keeps the juice from running out entirely. Beat it before mixing so it distributes rather than setting in streaks.
- Cutting the rhubarb"Cut fine" probably means quarter- to half-inch pieces. Young stalks need no peeling; older, thick, fibrous ones benefit from stripping the stringy outer layer.
- Stalks onlyRhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid and are not eaten; trim and discard them.
Rhubarb was a common dooryard plant, one of the first things to come up after the winter cellar stores ran out, which earned it the name "pie plant" in nineteenth-century American seed catalogues and cookbooks. That is largely how it was used: too sour to eat out of hand, cheap, reliably productive, and available weeks before any orchard fruit. A church or village compilation like this one collects receipts in the barest form, which is why Mrs. Deer gives four proportions and no oven, no crust, and no time. The assumption that every reader already knew how to line a plate and judge a fire is the clearest thing these books tell us about the kitchens they came from.