Apple Pie
Put a crust in the bottom of a dish. Put on it a layer of ripe apples, pared, cored, and sliced thin, then a layer of powdered sugar. Do this alternately, till the dish is filled. Add a few teaspoonfuls rose water and some cloves. Put on a crust and bake it.-Mrs. E.
Apple Pie.
Pare and stew the apples till thoroughly done and quite dry. Rub through a colander and sweeten with powdered sugar. When cool add the whites of eggs-three eggs to a pint of apples-and a teacup of cream, whipped. Beat all the ingredients together with a patent egg-whip-one with a wheel if convenient. Spread upon crusts of rich paste, baked in shallow tin pie-plates. Grate nutmeg on each one and pile up three or four deep.-Mrs. S.T. Apple Pie.
Pare and slice the apples. Make a little thick syrup of white sugar, into which throw a few cloves, allspice, or mace, as you prefer. In this syrup, scald a few apples at a time, taking them out and putting more in till all are slightly cooked. Set aside to cool, then pour into deep pie plates lined with paste. Dredge with flour. Put bits of butter over all. Dredge again. Cover with paste and bake. A glass of brandy or wine will improve it.--Mrs. S. T.
Three separate pies from three contributors, printed in a row. The first and third are conventional baked apple pies; the second is not baked at all once filled, and that is the one to leave alone.
- The raw-egg fillingMrs. S.T.'s second pie folds unbeaten-then-whipped raw egg whites and cream into cooled apple pulp and spreads it on crusts already baked. Nothing in the assembled pie ever reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the filling then sits at room temperature while the stacks are built. Use a current recipe if you want a stacked apple cream pie.
- Powdered sugarIn 1878 this meant sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar is the closest modern equivalent. (The third recipe calls only for 'white sugar' in the syrup.)
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as none could be. For a modern oven, a hot start (about 425F) to set and brown the bottom, then a drop to about 350F until the juices bubble thickly through the vents, is the usual approach; go by the bubbling rather than a clock.
- Rose waterA standard flavoring in Virginia kitchens before vanilla extract became cheap. It is potent: a few teaspoonfuls in a whole pie is on the strong side by modern palates, and a teaspoon is usually enough. Buy food-grade rose water, not the cosmetic kind.
- Cloves'some cloves' in the first recipe is unspecified; whole cloves scattered between the layers is the likeliest reading, though ground is possible. Ground cloves are far more assertive, so use them sparingly.
- Dredging with flourThe flour in the third recipe is the thickener, dusted over the fruit rather than stirred in. Two tablespoons total for a deep pie is about right, and it matters more here than usual because the apples have already been scalded in syrup and will give up their liquid readily.
- Scalding in syrupPoaching the slices in spiced syrup a few at a time firms them and keeps them from collapsing into sauce. Keep the syrup at a bare simmer and pull the apples while they still have resistance.
- "A patent egg-whip, one with a wheel"A geared rotary beater, a manufactured tool that had been on the market for some years by this date. A hand mixer does the same work.
- YieldNone of the three gives quantities or a dish size; the first simply says to layer 'till the dish is filled'. The second is built three or four shallow layers high and cut into wedges through the whole tower.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, and like most community books of its kind it prints contributions side by side under one heading, each signed by its contributor. That is why three unrelated apple pies appear here in sequence: the editor collected what her correspondents actually made and let the reader choose. The three together sketch the range of the period's fruit baking, from the plainest layered raw-apple pie to a scalded-and-spiced version enriched with brandy to a stacked cream pie clearly meant for company. Rose water in the first is the older taste showing through: distilled flower waters were the standard sweet flavoring in Anglo-American kitchens long before commercial vanilla extract. Stacked pies of the kind Mrs. S.T. describes, built three and four deep, are popularly associated with Appalachian stack cake, though the connection is folk association rather than documented lineage: a way of making a modest quantity of fruit look like an occasion.