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Mock Cherry Pie
1 cup cranberries
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup seeded raisins
1 teaspoon almond extract
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon butter
Line a pie-pan with crust. Fill with cranberries, washed and cut in halves, mixed with chopped raisins. Sprinkle with mixture of sugar and flour, add almond extract, and dot with butter. Cover with a second crust, and bake.
A two-crust pie with almost no written detail beyond the filling, so the two things to supply are a pan size and an oven temperature. The quantities are modest by modern standards.
- Cut every cranberryHalving the berries is the hinge of the recipe. Whole cranberries burst in the oven and shed their juice all at once, which floods the bottom crust; halved berries collapse gently and the flour has something to thicken.
- Oven and timeThe original gives none. Bake at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is browned and juice bubbles thickly at the vents.
- Pan size and yieldOne cup of cranberries and half a cup of raisins make a thin filling, enough for a shallow 8-inch pan at most. For a standard 9-inch pie, increase the filling by half and cut eight thin slices.
- Almond extractA full teaspoon is what makes the pie read as cherry rather than cranberry, and it is not a mistake. Modern extracts are strong and even; if yours is a concentrated bakers' grade, start with three-quarters of a teaspoon.
- Raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, a step done by hand or with a raisin-seeder before seedless varieties became standard. Any modern seedless raisin does the job. Chop them roughly so they distribute rather than sitting in sweet clumps.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of flour is on the light side for fruit this juicy. Toss the flour and sugar directly with the fruit rather than sprinkling it on top, so it hydrates evenly, and let the pie cool at least two hours before cutting or it will run.
- Vent the topNo vents are mentioned, but a solid lid over steaming cranberries will lift and split. Cut three or four slashes, or use a lattice.
Mock cherry pie belongs to a long American tradition of "mock" dishes, in which a cheap and available ingredient is coaxed into imitating an expensive or out-of-season one: mock turtle soup, mock apple pie from soda crackers, mock duck from a rolled flank steak. Cherries had a short season and did not keep, while cranberries came in by the barrel in autumn and held for weeks in a cold cellar; with raisins for sweetness and body and almond extract for the distinctive kernel note of a cherry, the substitution is convincing enough that the pie survived well past the point of necessity. Recipes of this type are often associated with New England, and they turn up in national compilations such as this Butterick volume, which was assembled for readers of the company's pattern magazines.