Prune Pie
1/2 lb. prunes 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/2 cup sugar (scant) 1 1/2 teaspoons butter 1 tablespoon flour Wash prunes and soak in enough cold water to cover. Cook in same water until soft. Remove stones, cut prunes in quarters, and mix with sugar and lemon juice. Reduce liquor to one and one-half tablespoons. Line plate with paste, cover with prunes, pour over liquor, dot over with butter, and dredge with flour. Put on an upper crust and bake in a moderate oven.
A thrifty dried-fruit pie of the sort that filled the gap between the last of the apples and the first of the rhubarb. The recipe assumes you know pie pastry and gives no time, so a few numbers are worth filling in.
- The hinge: reduce the liquorThe prune cooking water must be boiled down to about 1 1/2 tablespoons before it goes in the shell, as the recipe directs. Skip that and the filling floods the bottom crust; the reduced syrup also carries a good deal of the prune flavour.
- "Paste" and "plate"Paste is pie pastry, and a plate is a pie plate. Half a pound of prunes is enough for a shallow plate of about 8 inches; you need pastry for both a bottom and a top, on the order of a standard two-crust recipe.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as 350-375F. For a double-crust fruit pie some cooks prefer to start hotter, around 425F for the first 15 minutes to set and brown the bottom, then drop to 350F for another 25 to 30 minutes until the top is coloured and the filling bubbles at the vents.
- Soaking and cooking the prunesThe recipe sets no soaking time. Modern prunes are sold soft and partly rehydrated, so they need less soaking than the harder dried fruit of the period; an hour in cold water, then a simmer of 15 to 20 minutes, is usually enough.
- Pitted prunesThe instruction to remove stones is now optional; buy pitted prunes and quarter them after cooking. Weigh 1/2 lb, which is about 1 1/4 cups packed.
- The flourOne tablespoon dredged over the fruit is the only thickener. It is enough for a filling this dry, but if your prunes were very juicy or you did not reduce the liquor fully, use a scant tablespoon and a half.
- SugarA scant 1/2 cup is modest by period standards and reads as sweet-tart against the lemon. Prunes vary a good deal in sweetness, so taste the fruit before you commit to the full amount.
- Yield and servingOne shallow pie, six modest wedges. It is better warm than hot, and a spoonful of unsweetened cream suits it.