Cherry Pie
Line a pie-tin with rich crust; nearly fill with the carefully seeded fruit, sweeten to taste, and sprinkle evenly with a tea-spoon corn-starch or a table-spoon flour, add a table-spoon of butter cut into small bits and scattered over the top; wet edge of crust, put on upper crust, and press the edges closely together, taking care to provide holes in the center for the escape of the air. Pies from blackberries, raspberries, etc., are all made in the same way, regulating the quantity of the sugar by the tartness of the fruit.
A bare-bones fruit pie formula from a period when cooks were expected to know their own crust and their own fruit. The gaps are all in quantity and heat.
- QuantitiesFor a 9-inch pie, count on about 4 cups pitted sour cherries and 3/4 to 1 cup sugar; sweet cherries need closer to 1/2 cup plus a squeeze of lemon. "Nearly fill" means mounded slightly, since cherries collapse as they cook.
- ThickeningA teaspoon of cornstarch is far too little for juicy modern fruit unless you want a runny pie. Sour cherries release a great deal of liquid; 3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch or 1/3 cup flour tossed with the sugar and fruit is nearer the mark.
- OvenThe book gives none. Bake at 425F for 20 minutes, then drop to 375F for another 35 to 45 minutes, until the juice bubbles thickly through the vents rather than merely simmering.
- "Rich crust"In period usage this generally means a short paste heavy in butter or lard, rolled thin. Any standard double-crust pastry works; chill it hard before it goes in the oven.
- The ventsThe instruction to "provide holes in the center for the escape of the air" is the one that matters. Cherry filling generates a lot of steam, and a sealed top crust will lift off the filling or split at the rim.
- SealingThe recipe says only to wet the edge; water is the usual thing and it helps the two crusts fuse. Press with a fork or crimp firmly, because cherry juice will find any gap and burn on the tin.
- RestingCool at least two hours before cutting. Cornstarch and flour thickeners only set as the pie comes down to room temperature.
- Other fruitThe note about blackberries and raspberries holds, but adjust thickener as well as sugar. Soft berries can run juicier than cherries and may want the full 1/3 cup flour.
Fruit pies of this kind were the workhorse of American home baking, and the terseness of the entry is the point: the cookbook assumed its reader could make pastry and judge sweetness by tasting the fruit, so it recorded only the details that varied. Commercial corn starch is generally said to have spread through American kitchens over the second half of the nineteenth century, adopted as a cleaner-tasting thickener than flour; the recipe offers both and lets the cook choose. The instruction to seed the cherries "carefully" reflects a task often done by hand, and the closing line, extending the method to blackberries and raspberries, is typical of its kind: one technique, many fruits, whatever the garden or the woods had given up that week.