Apple Pie
About 4 tart apples. 1/2 cup sugar. 1 teaspoon extract lemon Pie paste No. 1 Peel, core and slice apples thin. Line pie plate with paste. Put in apples, sugar and a little water. Wet edges, cover with paste rolled out very thin. Bake in moderate steady oven until apples are cooked.
NOTE-Any green fruit pies can be made in similar manner to above. NOTE-To prevent juice of pies boiling out into oven, wet the edges when upper and lower crusts are joined, with thin paste, made of one teaspoon flour and three of water, instead of clear water.
About 14 apples 1 cup sugar Powder
A plain two-crust apple pie of the kind that assumes the cook already knows how a pie is put together. The ingredient list is minimal: apples, a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of lemon extract, and a batch of the book's own pie paste.
- OvenA "moderate steady oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F, though period usage varied and the book gives no figure. Many modern bakers start a fruit pie hot, around 425F for the first 15 minutes, to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F; the original's steady moderate heat works but tends to give a paler base.
- How many applesFourteen apples is a great deal for a single pie by modern standards; the recipe gives no plate size, so this may assume small cooking apples, or more than one pie. For a 9-inch plate, about 2 to 2.5 lb of apples, roughly 6 to 8 medium fruit, sliced thin, is enough.
- SugarA cup of sugar suits genuinely tart green apples. With supermarket Granny Smith reduce to about 3/4 cup, and with sweet eating apples such as Gala or Fuji use half a cup or less.
- Lemon extractLemon extract is alcohol-based flavouring, not juice, and a full teaspoon reads strong to a modern palate. A tablespoon of lemon juice plus a little grated zest gives the acidity that keeps cooked apple from tasting flat.
- "A little water"Apples release plenty of liquid as they bake. A tablespoon or two is enough, and with juicy fruit none is needed; add a tablespoon of flour or cornstarch to the sugar instead if the apples are very wet.
- The flour-paste sealThe second note is the most useful line here. Brushing the crust edges with a slurry of one teaspoon flour to three teaspoons water, rather than plain water, glues the two crusts far more reliably than water alone and is worth adopting whatever pie you are making.
- Doneness"Until apples are cooked" means about 45 to 55 minutes at 350-375F. Test by sliding a thin skewer through a vent slit; the apples should offer no resistance, and the juices should be bubbling thickly rather than running thin.
- VentsThe recipe does not mention cutting steam vents in the top crust. Cut them, or the sealed top will balloon and split at the rim.
- YieldScaled to a 9-inch plate, one pie, six to eight servings; the original gives no plate size or yield. Cool at least an hour before cutting so the filling sets.
Apple pie earned its place at the front of American dessert chapters because apples kept. A barrel laid down in a cool cellar in October supplied pies into spring, long after soft summer fruit had gone, and the tart, firm varieties then grown for keeping and cider held their shape under long baking in a way that most modern dessert apples do not. The note that "any green fruit pies can be made in similar manner" is the real point of an entry like this one in a turn-of-the-century compilation: the book teaches a method and a paste, then lets the cook substitute whatever the season offers. The lemon extract is a period touch, cheap bottled flavouring being a fixture of the late nineteenth-century store cupboard at a time when fresh lemons were a seasonal luxury in much of the country.