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Berry Pies
3 cups blueberries, huckleberries, or blackberries 2/3 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon flour 1 teaspoon butter Line a pie plate with plain paste fill heaping with berries; dredge with flour, salt and sugar; dot with small pieces of butter; cover with top crust or strips of pastry across top. Bake about 45 minutes in moderate oven. Other fruit pies can be made in the same way.
A bare-bones berry pie of the kind that assumes the cook already knows how to make and roll pastry. The gaps worth filling are the oven temperature, the thickener, and the fact that a 1920s pie plate was smaller than the one in your cupboard.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" in a book of this period means about 350-375F. For a fruit pie it is worth starting at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then dropping to 375F for the remaining half hour, until the filling bubbles thickly through the vents.
- One teaspoon of flour is not enoughThis is the hinge. A single teaspoon will not thicken three cups of juicy berries; expect a runny pie as written. Figure 2-3 tablespoons of flour, or 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch, tossed with the fruit and sugar before filling.
- Dredge means tossDredging versus tossing -- The recipe means what it says: sprinkle the flour, salt and sugar over the heaped fruit. It works better to combine them with the berries in a bowl first so the thickener is distributed; dredging on top leaves pockets of raw flour at the surface and thin juice underneath.
- Pie plate sizeThree cups of fruit fills an 8-inch plate generously; a modern 9-inch deep dish wants 4 to 5 cups. Scale the sugar and thickener with the fruit.
- SugarTwo-thirds cup for three cups of berries is on the sweet side for cultivated blueberries. Wild huckleberries and blackberries, which are tarter, take the full amount; supermarket blueberries are fine with half a cup.
- Plain pasteA cross-reference to the book's own short crust, most likely a lard or shortening pastry, and you will need enough for a double 8-inch pie. Any all-butter or half-butter pastry works; chill it and cut steam vents in the top crust.
- Frozen berriesThey work without thawing, but add another tablespoon of thickener and expect 10 to 15 minutes more baking.
- Yield and servingSix modest wedges. Cool at least two hours before cutting; the filling only sets as it comes down from a boil, and a hot berry pie will run onto the plate.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, one of the great American promotional cookbooks. The instructions are compressed to the point of shorthand, and the closing line -- "Other fruit pies can be made in the same way" -- does the work of a dozen recipes. The grouping of blueberries, huckleberries and blackberries in a single line is itself a period detail: huckleberry was, and in parts of the country still is, used loosely for both true Gaylussacia and wild lowbush blueberries.