Prune Pie
1 cup cooked and pitted prunes
1 tablespoon flour
I lemon, juice and grated rind
½ cup sugar
1 cup water or juice
2 tablespoons butter
Cook the prunes with the other ingredients until slightly thickened. Add a little cinnamon or nutmeg, if desired. Bake between two crusts. Shredded coconut may be added to the filling, for variation. Prune pie is delicious served with ice-cream or whipped cream. This amount makes a small pie.
A thrifty double-crust fruit pie from the era when dried fruit filled the gap between the last apples and the first berries. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, so both need supplying.
- OvenFor a filled double-crust pie, start at 425F for 15 minutes to set and brown the bottom pastry, then drop to 350F for a further 25-30 minutes until the crust is coloured and any vents show bubbling juice. The filling is already cooked, so the bake is about the pastry alone.
- Cooking the prunes firstA cup of cooked, pitted prunes means dried prunes simmered or soaked until plump, then stoned. Save the soaking liquid; it can serve as the "juice" the recipe offers as an alternative to water.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of flour to a cup of liquid is a light bind, not a set custard. Cook the filling until it coats a spoon and let it cool completely before it goes into the shell, or the steam will slacken the bottom crust.
- The lemonJuice and grated rind of a whole lemon against half a cup of sugar makes a sharp filling by modern standards, which is the point — prunes are cloying without it. Zest before juicing, and keep the rind out of the white pith.
- ButterThe recipe cooks the two tablespoons in with everything else; stirring it in at the end, off the heat, is an alternative that gives a little more gloss.
- Spices and coconutA quarter teaspoon of cinnamon or a few gratings of nutmeg is enough for this quantity. If using the coconut variation, sweetened bagged coconut will push the pie noticeably sweeter than unsweetened.
- Yield"A small pie" suggests roughly a 7- or 8-inch tin, four modest slices. For a standard 9-inch pie plate, increase everything by about a third to a half.
- PastryNo crust recipe is given here; any plain short pastry using about 2 cups of flour will make the two rounds. Vent the top or the filling will lift it.
Prunes — dried plums, usually of the Agen type by way of California orchards that were producing heavily by the turn of the twentieth century — were a staple of the American winter pantry, cheap, shelf-stable and sold by the pound in bulk. Butterick's book belongs to the household-manual tradition aimed at the woman running a home on a budget, and a pie like this one is exactly what that audience wanted: a dessert built from a dried fruit that cost a fraction of fresh, brightened with a lemon and stretched between two crusts. The suggestion of coconut, and of serving with ice-cream or whipped cream, points to the kind of finishing touch the book's readers were expected to manage at home.