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Rhubarb Pie
2 cups rhubarb 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon corn starch 1/4 teaspoon salt Cut off root, stem ends and peel; cut into small pieces; put into deep pie plate which has been lined with paste add corn starch, salt and sugar. Cover with paste and bake about one half hour.
A bare-bones spring pie from a baking-powder company pamphlet, written for cooks who already knew how to line a pie plate. Two things need attention: the thickener is light for the amount of juice rhubarb throws, and no oven temperature is given at all.
- Oven temperatureThe book assumes you know your range. Start at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 375F and finish.
- Baking timeHalf an hour will not do for a double-crust fruit pie. Expect 40 to 55 minutes total, and judge by the filling bubbling thickly through the vents rather than by the clock.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of corn starch for two cups of rhubarb gives a loose, soupy pie by modern standards. Two to three tablespoons will hold it together better, and tossing the fruit with the sugar, starch and salt in a bowl first distributes it far better than scattering it over the fruit in the plate.
- PeelingSkip it unless the stalks are thick, late-season and stringy. Young forced or early-garden rhubarb has tender skin, and the red skin is where most of the colour comes from.
- The leaves"Cut off root, stem ends" means discard the leaf and the leaf base entirely. Rhubarb leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are not food; only the stalk is eaten.
- Vent the topThe recipe says only "cover with paste." Cut slits or prick the lid, or the steam from two cups of rhubarb will lift and split it.
- Pastry quantityNo pastry recipe is included here. You need enough for a double crust in a deep 8- or 9-inch plate, roughly 2 1/2 cups flour's worth.
- YieldOne deep pie, six slices. Cool at least an hour before cutting; the starch sets as it drops below boiling.
Rhubarb was long known in American kitchen gardens as "pie plant," a name that says exactly what it was grown for: it arrives in early spring when nothing else in the garden is ready for a dessert, and it is sour enough that it is nearly always heavily sweetened. That is why the sugar here nearly equals the fruit by volume. Promotional cookbooks issued by baking powder manufacturers in the early twentieth century were distributed free or for a few cents to put the brand in the hands of home cooks, and recipes in such collections are typically stripped to the fewest possible words, on the assumption of a reader who already knew how to make pastry and needed only the proportions. The absence of an oven temperature is a period marker in itself, from the years when many kitchens still ran on wood or coal and an oven thermometer was not yet standard equipment.