Prune Pie
Wash the prunes through several waters. Put in a preserving kettle in the proportion of two pounds fruit to one pound sugar. Pour a quantity of boiling water over them and let them boil at least two hours. When they are thoroughly done and the syrup thickens, take from the fire and pour into tin plates, lined with paste. Add one teaspoonful of butter. Cover with a rich paste and bake.-Mrs. S. T.
A cooked-fruit pie built from dried prunes rather than fresh fruit, written when prunes came whole and stony and needed long stewing. The recipe gives no oven temperature, no water quantity and no pie count, so most of the judgment falls to the cook.
- Pits firstPrunes sold in 1879 were generally unpitted. Modern dried plums come pitted; if you buy whole prunes, stone them after stewing and before they go anywhere near the crust.
- Two hours is for stony fruitOld dried prunes were hard and needed that long to break down. Today's soft, partly rehydrated prunes collapse in roughly 25 to 40 minutes of gentle simmering, and a full two hours risks scorching the sugar once the syrup has thickened. Cook only until the fruit is pulpy and the syrup coats a spoon.
- The sugar ratioTwo pounds fruit to one pound sugar is a preserving proportion, not a pie proportion, and prunes are already very sweet. Half that sugar, or less, gives a filling most modern palates will finish.
- "A quantity of boiling water"Genuinely unspecified. Enough to cover the fruit by an inch is the safe reading; the excess boils off as the syrup thickens, and any filling loose enough to run should be reduced further before it goes into the shell.
- Preserving kettleA wide, heavy, unlined or enamelled pan meant for jam. A broad heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven does the same work; width matters more than depth because the syrup has to evaporate.
- Tin platesShallow tinned-steel pie plates, roughly 8 to 9 inches across. The quantity here should fill two to three of them, so scale the pastry accordingly. The recipe does not say whether the teaspoonful of butter is per pie or for the whole batch; per pie, dotted over the filling, is the likelier reading.
- OvenNone is given. A double-crust fruit pie of this kind wants 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom pastry, then 350F for 30 to 40 minutes until the top browns. Cut vents; a thick boiling syrup will otherwise lift the lid.
- ServingCool at least an hour. The filling is essentially prune jam and stays molten far longer than a fresh-fruit pie.
Prunes reached American grocers as an imported dried good through most of the nineteenth century, largely from France, before California plantings made them cheap and domestic in the last decades of the century, and their keeping quality made them a staple of ships' stores and country stores alike. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, is a collection of contributions from named and initialled housekeepers from Virginia and other Southern states, which is why this one carries only "Mrs. S. T." The method here is really preserving practice pressed into service as pie filling: fruit and sugar boiled down together in the jam kettle, then spooned into pastry.