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Rhubarb Pie
Pare off all the leaves and peel the stalks from two bunches of fine rhubarb; cut them into pieces about half an inch in length, put them in a basin with three ounces of powdered loaf-sugar and mix them well. Place them in a pie-dish, cover with paste, brush the surface with beaten egg and bake for fifteen or twenty minutes in a brisk oven. Move the pan to the oven door, sprinkle over powdered loaf-sugar. Then place it in the oven again to melt the sugar. Take it out when done, and serve either hot or cold.
A plain English-style rhubarb pie: a single crust laid over raw fruit, glazed with egg and finished with a sugar crust. Two things in the original will trip up a modern baker — the sugar is light and the baking time is short.
- The hinge: baking timeFifteen to twenty minutes will set the egg wash and colour the pastry but will not cook raw rhubarb through under a lid of dough. Expect 40 to 50 minutes total, the first 15 at high heat and the rest lowered, until juice bubbles thickly at the vent.
- "A brisk oven"Conventionally read as roughly 400-425F. Drop to about 375F once the pastry has taken colour, or the top will darken long before the fruit collapses.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones or blocks and broken up as needed; "powdered loaf-sugar" means it has been crushed fine, not modern confectioners' sugar. Use granulated for the fruit and caster or granulated for the finishing sprinkle.
- Three ounces is not muchThree ounces is a scant half cup for what may be two pounds of rhubarb — a distinctly tart pie by current tastes. Modern rhubarb pie recipes commonly call for considerably more, often 3/4 to 1 cup of sugar per pound and a half of trimmed stalks.
- "Two bunches"Genuinely ambiguous. Field bunches vary; read it as roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb of trimmed stalks, enough to heap a 9-inch pie dish, since raw rhubarb sinks considerably as it cooks.
- No thickenerRhubarb throws a great deal of liquid and there is nothing here to bind it. If you want a sliceable pie rather than a spooned one, toss the fruit with a tablespoon or two of cornstarch or flour, or let the sugared fruit stand and drain first.
- The leavesThe instruction to pare off all the leaves is not fussiness — rhubarb leaf blades carry oxalic acid and other compounds and are not edible. Discard them; only the stalks are used.
- The sugar glazeReturning the pie to the oven door to sprinkle and melt sugar gives a thin crackled top. A minute or two under a broiler does the same, but watch it, as the egg-washed pastry is already brown.
- YieldProbably about one deep 9-inch pie dish; the recipe gives no dish size, so reckon six to eight servings.
Rhubarb reached American kitchens as a garden plant in the early nineteenth century and was commonly called "pie plant" in seed catalogues and cookbooks well into the 1900s. Its appeal was seasonal timing: the stalks come up in early spring, weeks before any tree fruit, and a household with a rhubarb clump could put a fresh pie on the table when the cellar apples were finished. Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf, published his cook book in 1896. This version follows an English pattern — a single sheet of paste over the fruit, egg-washed and sugar-glazed, rather than the double-crust or lattice most Americans now picture.