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Puff Paste: Line
To 2 cupfuls raspberries add 1 cupful ripe currants and 1 cupful granulated sugar, with which a tablespoonful flour has been mixed; stir together. Line a plate with flaky pie crust, put in the fruit, cover with a tolerably thick sheet of paste, make several incisions for the escape of steam, and bake till the crusts are nicely browned. Serve cool.
Cherry Pie. 2 cupfuls sour cherries, 1 cupful granulated sugar, 1 tablespoonful flour.
Pick over and wash the cherries, add sugar and flour, mix together.
Line a pan with paste, fill with the cherries, and cover with a sheet of paste, rolled twice as thick as ordinary pie crust. Make incisions near the center for the escape of steam, and bake till brown. If the cherries are sweet, use less sugar.
Pumpkin Pie. 2 cupfuls stewed pumpkin, 1 cupful rich milk, cupful molasses, cupful granulated sugar, 1 tablespoonful melted butter, 1 tablespoonful ginger, 1 teaspoonful salt, 2 eggs.
Stir well together, line a deep tin pie pan with paste rolled moderately thick, sift a little flour evenly over the bottom, and fill three quarters full with the prepared mixture. Bake until the pie is brown in the center. In MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK preparing the pumpkin, use very little water. Cover the kettle in which it is cooking, and stew until the pumpkin is perfectly soft, then remove the cover and continue the stewing, stirring frequently until the moisture evaporates and the pumpkin becomes a smooth paste. Rub through a fine sieve.
Three fruit-and-custard pies run together under one heading, with the book's running header ("MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK") dropped mid-sentence into the pumpkin instructions. Read that line as "In preparing the pumpkin, use very little water."
- Missing fractionsThe pumpkin filling calls for "cupful molasses" and "cupful granulated sugar", where a fraction appears to have dropped out in typesetting; a half cup of each is a reasonable reading. Start with 1/2 cup molasses and 1/2 cup sugar. A tablespoon of ground ginger is also unusually assertive by modern taste; 1 to 2 teaspoons, with a little cinnamon and nutmeg, is closer to what many palates now expect.
- Oven temperatures"Bake till the crusts are nicely browned" assumes a wood range with a hot floor. For the fruit pies, start at 425F for 20 minutes to set and brown the bottom crust, then drop to 375F for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the juices bubble thickly through the vents. The pumpkin pie wants 425F for 15 minutes, then 350F for 35 to 45 minutes.
- The hinge: thickeningOne tablespoon of flour for two cups of fruit is light by current standards, and raspberries and sour cherries both run freely. Expect a juicy, spoonable pie rather than a sliceable wedge. If you want clean slices, use 3 to 4 tablespoons of flour or 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, and let the pie cool completely — the filling sets as it cools, and the original does direct that the raspberry pie be served cool.
- Line a plate"Plate" and "pan" here both mean a shallow tin pie plate, probably 8 or 9 inches across. The pumpkin recipe specifies a deep pan; a modern 9-inch deep-dish plate is a reasonable choice, and the instruction to fill it three-quarters full still applies, since the custard puffs as it bakes.
- Flour on the bottom crustSifting flour over the raw bottom crust before adding wet filling is a working method, not a quirk — it absorbs the first of the liquid and slows sogging. A tablespoon of flour mixed with a little sugar does the same job, and so does blind-baking the shell for 10 minutes.
- Judging the custard"Bake until the pie is brown in the center" overshoots. Pull the pumpkin pie when the outer two inches are set and the center still wobbles as a single mass; carryover heat finishes it. Baked until firm and browned throughout, an egg custard weeps and cracks.
- Ripe currantsRed currants were a common dooryard fruit in this period and are now hard to buy fresh in much of the United States. Frozen currants work, or substitute an equal volume of raspberries plus a tablespoon of lemon juice for the acidity the currants supplied.
- Stewed pumpkinThe instruction to cook covered, then uncovered until the purée is a stiff paste, is the whole difference between a good pumpkin pie and a watery one. Canned pumpkin purée is already close to this consistency; canned pumpkin pie filling is pre-sweetened and pre-spiced and should not be used here.
- YieldEach pie serves six to eight.
These belong to an American double-crust tradition, in which the pie was a household staple rather than an occasion op crcrust rolked "twice as thick as ordinary pie crust" so it would hold together over a wet filling, and slits cut near the center to vent steam. The molasses in the pumpkin pie is the older sweetening, still standing beside granulated sugar, which by then had become cheap and widely available; recipes of this sort often use both, the molasses for color and depth and the sugar for straightforward sweetness. The insistence on driving the moisture out of the stewed pumpkin points to a time when the pumpkin came from the garden or root cellar rather than a can ield a a cook who skipped the reduction step got a pie that never set. The words "Puff Paste" sit oddly above what is described, which is a flaky short crust rather than the laminated butter paste a pastry cook would mean by the term.