Rhubarb Pie
1½ cups rhubarb ⅞ cup sugar 1 egg 2 tablespoons flour Skin and cut stalks of rhubarb in half-inch pieces before measuring. Mix sugar, flour, and egg; add to rhubarb and bake between crusts. Many prefer to scald rhubarb before using; if so prepared, losing some of its acidity, less sugar is required. 1¼ cups steamed and strained squash 1/4 cup sugar ⅞ teaspoon salt Squash Pie I ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, or ½ teaspoon lemon extract 1 egg ½ cup milk Mix sugar, salt, and spice or extract, add squash, egg slightly beaten, and milk gradually. Bake in one crust, following directions for Custard Pie. If a richer pie is desired, use one cup squash, one-half cup each of milk and cream, and an additional egg yolk. 1 cup squash, steamed and strained 1 cup heavy cream
A plain nineteenth-century fruit pie: raw rhubarb, sugar, flour and egg, sealed between two crusts and baked until the fruit collapses into its own syrup. A few of the quantities and habits need translating.
- The sugar amount is unclearThe sugar figure in the original text is not legible as a usable measure. Comparable pies of the period tend to call for something on the order of ¾ to 1 cup of sugar for this much fruit; taste the fruit and lean higher if the stalks are very green and sour.
- Measure after cuttingThe instruction to skin and cut the stalks before measuring matters. Half-inch pieces pack differently from whole stalks, and 1½ cups of cut rhubarb is something under ½ lb trimmed.
- Skinning is optional nowOlder garden rhubarb had tough, stringy outer skin worth peeling. Modern forced and field rhubarb is tender enough that trimming the ends and washing is sufficient.
- Leaves are not foodUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid and related compounds at levels that make them genuinely unsafe to eat; cut them off and discard them.
- The flour and egg are the thickenerTwo tablespoons of flour with one egg is a light bind for a very wet fruit. Toss the sugar-flour-egg mixture through the rhubarb just before filling so the flour does not sit and clump, and cut generous vents in the top crust.
- Scalding, and whyThe book says only that many prefer to scald the rhubarb first; that most likely means a brief dousing in or simmer with boiling water, then draining. Either way it leaches out some acid, which is why the recipe says less sugar is then needed. It also softens the fruit, so the filling sets looser; skip it if you want the pie to hold a slice.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no temperature or time, only "bake between crusts". As a modern equivalent, start at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for a further 35 to 45 minutes, until the juices bubble thickly through the vents.
- YieldThis is a small quantity of filling, suited to a shallow pie plate. In a modern 9-inch plate it will look thin; increase the fruit by half and scale the rest.
- Cool it fullyRhubarb filling is molten and very fluid straight from the oven. Give it at least two hours at room temperature or it will run off the plate.
Rhubarb reached American kitchens as a medicinal root long before it was eaten as fruit, and only became a common garden crop in the nineteenth century, where its early spring stalks earned it the nickname pie plant. That timing is the point of the recipe: rhubarb was the first tart thing available after a winter of dried apples and preserves, which is why cookbooks of Fannie Farmer's generation treat it as a fruit and pair it with a great deal of sugar. The Boston Cooking School book gives it the same skeleton as its other two-crust fruit pies, with an egg and a little flour standing in for the pectin and body that rhubarb lacks. It also notes that some cooks scald the stalks first.