Home › Pastry, Pies and Tarts › Cranberry Pie
Cranberry Pie
Three cups cranberries, stewed with one and one-half cups sugar, and strained. Line pie plate with paste; put in cranberry jam; wash the edges, lay three narrow bars across; fasten at edge, then three more across, forming diamond-shaped spaces. Lay rim of paste; wash with egg wash; bake in quick oven until paste is cooked.
A lattice-topped cranberry tart built on a cooked, strained cranberry paste rather than whole berries. The only vague instruction is the oven, and that is easily fixed.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400–450F. Bake until the lattice is set and coloured and the filling bubbles at the edges; because the filling goes in already cooked, this may take only 25–35 minutes. Drop the heat towards 375F if the pastry browns before the centre is done.
- Stewing the berriesThree cups of fresh or frozen cranberries with 1 1/2 cups sugar and about 1/2 cup water, simmered until the skins burst, 8–10 minutes. Push through a sieve or food mill; the point of straining is to remove the tough skins, so the finished filling should be smooth.
- Consistency matters mostCranberries are high in pectin and the strained purée should mound on a spoon before it goes into the shell. A runny filling will soak the base and leak through the lattice; cook it down further rather than trusting the oven to thicken it.
- Paste"Paste" is simply pie pastry. A standard double-crust quantity is right: one round for the plate, the rest rolled and cut into six narrow strips.
- Wash the edgesBrush the pastry rim with water before laying the strips so they adhere. Three strips one way and three the other over a round plate gives the diamond spaces described.
- Rim of pasteA separate band of pastry laid over the trimmed strip-ends to seal them down and finish the edge. Press it firmly or the lattice will lift as it bakes.
- Egg washOne egg beaten with a tablespoon of water or milk. Brush the lattice and rim only, not the exposed filling.
- YieldProbably a 9-inch pie, six to eight servings, though the recipe does not state a size. Serve at room temperature; the filling firms as it cools.
Cranberry pie belongs to a large family of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American pies built on a single tart fruit stretched with sugar, and it turns up in New England community and household cookbooks; the berries kept well into winter in a cool cellar or a crock of water. Short, assumption-heavy instruction of this kind was normal for the period, taking for granted that the reader already knew how to make paste and how hot her own oven ran.