Peach Pie
Remove skins from peaches. This may be done easily after allowing peaches to stand in boiling water one minute. Cut in eighths, cook until soft with enough water to prevent burning; sweeten to taste. Cool, and fill crust previously baked. Cover with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored. Fresh strawberries, cut in halves, slightly mashed and sweetened, are attractively served in a pastry case. 1/2 lb. prunes ½ cup sugar (scant)
A single-crust pie in the older sense: the shell is baked empty, the fruit cooked separately on the stove, and the two brought together cold. Nothing is baked once assembled, so the timing hinges on temperature rather than the oven.
- The stray line at the end"1/2 lb. prunes, 1/2 cup sugar (scant)" -- belongs to a neighbouring recipe, not to this one. Ignore it; peach pie needs no prunes.
- Fill cold, serve soonThe cooked fruit must be fully cool before it goes into the shell, or the pastry will steam and soften from beneath. Assemble shortly before serving for a crisp base.
- Blind-baking the shell"Crust previously baked" means the shell is baked empty before filling: line the tin, dock or weight the pastry, and bake until dry and pale gold. The recipe itself gives no temperature or time.
- PeelingOne minute in boiling water works for ripe freestone peaches; drop them into ice water straight after and the skins slip off. Underripe fruit resists this and is better pared with a knife.
- How much fruitThe original gives no quantity, and no tin size. Something in the region of 2 lb of peaches will fill a standard shell, since they lose considerable volume in cooking.
- Sweetening"Sweeten to taste" is genuinely open here, and rightly so: ripe summer peaches may want 1/4 cup sugar, hard supermarket fruit closer to 3/4 cup. Add it near the end of cooking and taste.
- Cooking downUse only a few tablespoons of water and cook uncovered so the juice reduces; peaches release a great deal of liquid and a wet filling will flood the shell. A pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon sharpen the flavour.
- The cream"Flavored" is unspecified here; vanilla, or a spoonful of sherry or brandy, would suit. Whip to soft peaks only and spread it on shortly before serving.
- YieldNot given. A shell of the usual size will serve about six.
Fannie Farmer's pie chapter divides neatly between pies baked with their filling and pies like this one, where a blind-baked shell is filled with cooked or raw fruit and finished with cream. The one-minute boiling-water dip for loosening skins is the same technique the book applies to tomatoes. The tacked-on strawberry variation shows how these shells were understood: a neutral pastry case for whatever was ripe that week, whipped cream doing the work that a lattice crust does in a baked pie.