Rhubarb Pie
Carefully skin the stalks, cut in pieces half an inch long. Scald in a little rich syrup, but not long enough to become soft. Set aside, and when nearly cool, pour into a pie plate, lined with paste. Put a little grated lemon rind and a piece of butter the size of a walnut, in each pie. Dredge with flour, put on a top crust and bake.--Mrs. T.
A late-spring pie from a book that assumes the cook knows how much sugar a sour fruit needs. The scalding step is the point of the method and worth keeping.
- The hinge: scald, don't cookRhubarb collapses into strings and water the moment it softens. Bring it just to a simmer in the syrup, off the heat within a minute or two, so the pieces hold their shape and the filling goes into the shell already sweetened rather than drawing juice out during baking.
- "A little rich syrup" is unmeasuredThe original gives no quantity, and this is the one place it matters. A workable ratio for 4 cups of cut rhubarb is about 1 1/4 cups sugar dissolved in 1/4 cup water; taste the syrup, since garden rhubarb varies a good deal in acidity.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 1 ounce, or 2 tablespoons. A period cook measured fat by eye against familiar objects; an egg was about 2 ounces, a walnut half that.
- Dredge with flourThis is the thickener, and the amount is left to judgment. Two to three tablespoons scattered over the fruit will set the juices of a 9-inch pie; drain off some of the syrup first if the fruit looks very wet.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book predates oven dials. Start at 425F for about 20 minutes to set and colour the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 25 to 30 minutes, until the filling bubbles thickly at the vents.
- Skinning the stalksOlder garden rhubarb was often coarser and stringier than what is sold now, which is the likeliest reason for the instruction to peel. Modern forced or field rhubarb with thin skin needs only trimming, though very thick late-season stalks still benefit from having the outer layer pulled away.
- LeavesUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantities that make them inedible; this recipe, like others of its kind, calls only for the stalks.
- YieldOne 9-inch double-crust pie, six to eight servings. The recipe's phrasing "in each pie" implies the cook is scaling the fruit and syrup to however many shells are lined.
Rhubarb reached American kitchen gardens as a medicinal plant before it became a dessert; the root was long valued as a purgative, and the culinary use of the stalks spread in Britain and America mainly through the first half of the nineteenth century, a shift often linked to the falling price of sugar that made a sour vegetable worth sweetening. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled in 1879, rhubarb was common enough to be called pie plant in much of the country, and it earned its place in a Virginia household book for a practical reason: it is ready in April and May, weeks before any tree fruit, and it comes up on its own year after year. Marion Cabell Tyree's collection gathers contributions from named and initialed housekeepers, and "Mrs. T." here records the sequence of operations and trusts the reader to supply the proportions.