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Apple Pie
Stew green or ripe apples, when you have pared and cored them. Mash to a smooth compote, sweeten to taste, and while hot, stir in a teaspoon butter for each pie. Season with nutmeg. When cool, fill your crust, and either cross-bar the top with strips of paste, or make without cover. Eat cold, with powdered sugar strewed over it.
This is an old-style apple pie in which the filling is fully cooked before it ever reaches the pastry, so the baking is only about the crust. That changes how you handle it.
- The hinge: cook the filling down firstBecause the apples go in as a cool, thick sauce, the pie will not thicken in the oven. Stew them until they hold a mound on the spoon; a wet compote will soak the base no matter how well you bake it.
- "Green" applesHere this means unripe or hard tart apples rather than a variety name. Bramley, Granny Smith or any firm cooking apple stands in; ripe eating apples give a sweeter, looser sauce and need less sugar.
- No oven givenFor a filled open pie, start at 425F for 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F for another 25 to 30 minutes until the lattice or rim is browned. If you make it uncovered, blind-baking the shell first gives a crisper base.
- Butter quantityOne teaspoon per pie is a light touch; a tablespoon stirred into the hot apple gives a glossier, richer compote without making it greasy.
- Sweetening to tasteWith tart apples reckon on 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar per 2 lb of fruit, added while the apples are still hot so it dissolves. Taste when cool, since sweetness reads lower cold than warm.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and go lightly, about a quarter teaspoon per pie. Pre-ground nutmeg is flatter and can dominate a plain apple filling.
- Paste"Paste" is simply pastry. Any short crust works; the strips for the cross-bar top should be cut about half an inch wide and laid on the cooled filling, not warm, or they will slump.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no size; scaled as written it suits a 9-inch pie, which would give six to eight servings. It is meant to be eaten cold with powdered sugar dusted on at the table, which is best done just before serving or the sugar dissolves into the fruit.
Pies built from a pre-cooked apple compote rather than raw slices appear in nineteenth-century American and English household books, and they answered a practical problem: oven heat was unreliable, and fruit already reduced on the stovetop was certain to be cooked through. The open or lattice top belongs to the same tradition as the tart, showing off the fruit. The instruction to eat it cold with powdered sugar is a reminder that pie in this period could be a supper or tea-table dish as well as a hot dessert.