Rhubarb Pie
1½ cups rhubarb 2/3 cup sugar 1 egg 1 tablespoon flour Prepare the rhubarb and scald it as for stewing; mix with the other ingredients and bake between two crusts.
A spare, terse formula of the sort loose-leaf books favored, assuming the cook already knew how pies were handled. Two things need reading between the lines: the stray cup of water and the very small quantity of fruit.
- The cup of water is for scaldingThe cup of water is most likely for scalding -- it is printed at the end of the ingredient list, and the probable reading is that the rhubarb is scalded in it and then drained, since carrying that water into the shell would flood the crust. The recipe does not say so outright. Drain well and let the fruit cool before mixing in the sugar, egg and flour.
- Scald, do not stew"Scald it as for stewing" means pour boiling water over the cut stalks, or bring them barely to a boil and pull them off at once. Rhubarb collapses to threads within a couple of minutes of real simmering, and a fully stewed filling bakes into a wet purée.
- Quantity is for a small pieA cup and a half of prepared rhubarb fills a 6- to 7-inch tin thinly. For a standard 9-inch double-crust pie, triple the filling: about 4 to 4 1/2 cups rhubarb, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons flour. Serves 6 to 8.
- One tablespoon of flour is a light handWith scalded, well-drained fruit and an egg to set, that is enough to hold the juice. If the rhubarb goes in wet, expect a runny slice; a second tablespoon per pie is a reasonable insurance and will not be tasted.
- OvenNo temperature is given, as was usual in books of this kind, when oven heat was judged rather than dialled. Start at 425F for 15 minutes to set and brown the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the vents show thick bubbling. A metal or glass tin on a preheated baking sheet helps the base.
- Sugar to fruitTwo-thirds of a cup to a cup and a half of rhubarb is sweeter than most modern palates want, but rhubarb is genuinely sour and the egg mutes nothing. Cutting to about half a cup per cup and a half of fruit is safe; going much below that makes a harsh pie.
- Trim the leavesRhubarb leaf blades contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not eaten. Use only the stalks, cut in half-inch pieces; no peeling is needed on young stems.
Rhubarb reached American gardens as a medicinal root long before it was eaten, and the culinary stalk varieties spread through seedsmen's catalogues in the nineteenth century; by the time this book was compiled it was the standard first fruit of the year, ready in April when the apples in the cellar were finished and nothing else had come in. It went by the name "pie plant" in American usage, a term that appears in market lists and seed catalogues well into the twentieth century, and that timing is the derivation usually offered for it. The egg here is the mark of an older school of fruit pie: before cornstarch was routine, some cooks bound thin, acid juices with a beaten egg and a spoonful of flour, which gives the set filling its faintly custardy body. Mrs. Fryer's loose-leaf format, sold as pages to be shuffled into a binder, keeps each recipe as a compact formula rather than a narrative to be read.