Apple Pie II
Use same ingredients as for Apple Pie I. Place in small earthen baking-dish and add hot water to prevent apples from burning. Cover closely, and bake three hours in very slow oven, when apples will be a dark red color. Brown sugar may be used instead of white sugar, a little more being required. Cool, and bake between two crusts.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: it borrows the filling from Apple Pie I and precooks it for hours before it ever meets pastry. The three-hour bake is the whole point, so do not shorten it.
- The ingredients you are sent back forApple Pie I calls for sour (tart) apples, sugar, a little salt, grated nutmeg, butter and lemon juice; roughly a third to a half cup of sugar for one pie. Read that page first; this one gives no quantities of its own.
- "Very slow oven"Roughly 250 to 275F in modern terms. Higher heat will cook the apples down faster but give less of the dark colour the recipe is after.
- The earthen baking-dishAny lidded ceramic, stoneware or enamelled cast-iron dish of about a quart. A tight lid matters more than the material; if yours is loose, seal with foil under it so the steam stays in.
- How much hot waterThe recipe does not say. A few tablespoons in the bottom of the dish should be enough to keep the fruit from scorching before it releases its own juice; much more risks a watery filling.
- Why it goes darkThree hours of enclosed low heat caramelizes the sugars and darkens the fruit, the same slow browning that turns apple butter mahogany. This is colour and flavour, not doneness; the apples collapse long before the three hours are up.
- Cool it properlyThe filling must be at room temperature or colder before it goes into pastry, or it will melt the butter in the crust and the bottom will be greasy and slack. Overnight in the refrigerator is better than an hour on the counter.
- The second bakeLine the plate, fill, cover, vent the top and bake at 425F for about 20 minutes, then 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the crust is browned through. The filling needs no further cooking, so judge entirely by the pastry.
- ThickeningLong slow cooking already reduces the juice, so no flour or cornstarch is wanted here. Brown sugar, as suggested, deepens the colour further; add a spoonful or two more than you would of white.
- YieldOne double-crust pie, six to eight servings.
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book habitually gives a plain version of a dish and then numbered variations, and this is variation II of the apple pie: the same fruit and seasoning, put through a long enclosed bake first. The technique belongs to the coal and wood range, where a firebox banked for the night left an oven at roughly the low, steady heat this calls for, and cooks used it for the things that wanted hours rather than minutes abeans, brown bread, slow-stewed fruit. Deeply cooked apples of this kind are close cousins to apple butter, and the effect that Farmer describes as "a dark red color" suggests something like the caramelization prized in a long-cooked tarte Tatin filling. The instruction to substitute brown sugar is a period economy as much as a flavour note.