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Rhubarb Pie
1 pint rhubarb, cut in small pieces 2/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1/3 cup cold water 1 teaspoon melted shortening plain pastry Mix rhubarb and sugar. Cook sauce until it is thick. Add cornstarch, dissolved in water. Cook mixture until it is clear. Add melted shortening, invert pie pan. Cover with plain pastry, fitting the pan carefully. Trim off edges if necessary. Prick top with fork. Set pan on thin sheet in order that edge of crust may not touch floor of oven. Bake pastry in quick oven 15 minutes, or until well done and a good brown. Slip crust from outside of pan and place it on inside. Fill with rhubarb mixture and heap meringue lightly on top. Brown meringue slightly in slow oven. Sufficient for 1 pie.
This is a filled shell rather than a two-crust pie: the pastry is baked over the outside of an upturned pan, then flipped right side up and filled with a cooked rhubarb sauce. The order of operations is the whole trick.
- Quick ovenFor the pastry, 425-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat sets and colours a thin shell without letting it slump.
- Slow ovenAround 300F for the meringue. At that temperature browning is slow; the recipe asks only that it be browned slightly.
- The inverted panRoll the pastry, drape it over the outside of an overturned pie pan, trim, and prick well so steam escapes. Standing the pan on a baking sheet keeps the rim off the oven floor, as the text says. Let the shell cool a minute before lifting it off, or it will crack.
- A pint of rhubarbMeasured cut up, that is 2 cups, roughly 8 oz of trimmed stalks. Use the stalks only; rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are never eaten.
- Thickening orderRhubarb and sugar cook down to a loose sauce on their own; the cornstarch slurry goes in after and must boil briefly until the cloudiness clears, or the filling will taste starchy and set poorly.
- The teaspoon of shorteningLikely there for gloss and to discourage a skin on the cooling sauce rather than for richness. Butter would do the same job.
- Assemble warm, serve soonA filling put into a baked shell will soften it within an hour or two. Fill, meringue, brown, and serve the same day.
- YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pie, six modest slices.
Rhubarb was the first fresh acid fruit of the northern spring, which is why nineteenth-century American cooks called it pie plant, and why it turns up so often in menu plans for April and May. Instead of a double crust, a single thin shell is baked separately over an inverted pan and filled with a cornstarch-set sauce, which uses less fat and less flour and keeps the crust crisp rather than sodden underneath a wet fruit. Meringue on top puts leftover egg whites to work, and the pairing of a sharp cooked fruit base with a sweet white cap follows the same logic as lemon meringue pie.