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Cracker Pies
1/2 POUND BUTTER, MELTED Crush crackers to fine crumbs, and add butter. Line a pie tin with a little more than half the mixture and press down firmly. Lay prepared fruit on top, add sugar, dots of butter, and a dash of spice. Cover with remaining crumb mixture, press it down with another pan to make a smooth and even covering, invert the second pan to make a cover over the pie and bake it in a slowish oven until fruit is done, taking off cover at the end for top crust to brown.
There's endless variety to this stunt, like using vanilla crackers for custard pie, ginger snaps for lemon pie, etc. Stale biscuit or corn bread crumbs can be used in the same way for meat and vegetable pies.
For folks who cannot leave their city appetites at home we invented something even simpler than cracker pies, and christened it Joke Pie. Here it is:
A camp pie built entirely from cracker crumbs and butter, with no rolled pastry and no rolling pin. The method is sound, but the printed ingredient list is incomplete and a few of the directions assume a wood-fired camp oven.
- The missing quantityOnly the butter is given a weight here. The crackers themselves have no measure, so the ratio has to be judged: crumbs should hold together when squeezed in the hand without pooling grease, which in practice runs to roughly two parts cracker crumbs by weight to one part butter.
- "Slowish oven"Read this as 300-325F. The point is to cook the fruit through without scorching a crust that is already half fat and fully baked cracker.
- The two-pan trickInverting a second pie tin over the top is the hinge of the recipe. It traps steam so the fruit cooks and the crumb top sets rather than burning; in a modern oven a loose foil dome does the same job. The text says only to take the cover off "at the end" for the top to brown -- in practice the last ten minutes or so.
- Which crackersThe recipe does not say which cracker to use; a plain soda or water cracker is the likeliest intent. Modern saltines work but bring more salt than older plain crackers, so taste before sweetening. The vanilla crackers and ginger snaps the text suggests for custard and lemon pies are sweetened, and would need less sugar with the fruit.
- "Prepared fruit"Sliced apples, pitted cherries, rhubarb stalks, berries. Firm fruit should be sliced thin, since there is no long bake to soften it; expect 40-50 minutes for apples, closer to 30 for soft berries.
- Sugar and spiceNo amounts are given. For a 9-inch pie, 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar suits tart apples or rhubarb, less for sweet berries. The text asks only for "a dash of spice" -- a scant half teaspoon of cinnamon or a grating of nutmeg.
- Pressing the crustPress the base crumbs hard up the sides as well as across the bottom. An unpressed cracker crust collapses into the fruit juice and turns to paste.
- YieldThe recipe gives no pan size or serving count; the quantities suit roughly one 9-inch pie, about six servings. It cuts cleanly only once cooled; served hot it is a spoon dessert.
Crumb-crust pies belong to the tradition of cooking where flour, a board and a rolling pin are luxuries: the crackers travel in a tin, survive a pack, and arrive already dry enough to crush. Outdoor and camp cookery books of the early twentieth century contain many substitutions of this kind, and the author's aside about stale biscuit or corn bread crumbs for meat and vegetable pies points at a similar thrift. The inverted second pan works as an improvised lid, in place of a covered oven or a bed of coals. Pressed crumb crusts of this sort predate the packaged graham crust of the mid-century supermarket.