Crumb Pie
Soak in a little warm water one tea-cup bread-crumbs half an hour, add three table-spoons sugar, half a table-spoon butter, half a cup of cold water, a little vinegar, and nutmeg to suit the taste; bake with two crusts, made the same as for other pies. - Miss Sylvia J. Courter.
A pantry pie built from bread, sugar and vinegar, of the same family as vinegar pie and mock apple. The original assumes a cook who already knows how pies behave, so several quantities and all the oven guidance are missing.
- The crumbs matter mostThis wants soft crumbs torn or grated from stale white bread, not the dry, sandy commercial crumbs sold for breading. Dry crumbs drink far more water and bake to a paste.
- "A little warm water"Genuinely unspecified. Enough to soften a cup of crumbs without drowning them is roughly a third to a half cup; the mixture should be sodden but still hold a shape on the spoon before the additional half cup of cold water goes in.
- The vinegarAlso unmeasured, and it carries the flavour of the pie rather than merely seasoning it. A teaspoon of cider vinegar reads as a faint brightness; a tablespoon gives the sharp, almost fruit-like note associated with this family of pies. Easiest to add it last and taste.
- Sugar levelThree tablespoons is modest by later standards and the filling will taste more bready than sweet. Other vinegar-pie recipes of the period are often noticeably sweeter; taste and adjust before it goes into the shell rather than after.
- NutmegGrate it fresh. Pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its volatile oil, and in a pie with this few ingredients it is doing much of the work.
- OvenNone is given. Bake as for any double-crust pie: 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then 350F for another 30 to 35 minutes until the top browns.
- VentingThe filling is wet and will steam. Cut vents in the top crust or the two layers will separate and the lid will dome off.
- YieldOne double-crust pie; the quantities are scant, so a smaller tin (8-inch or less) suits them better than a full 9-inch. Best eaten the day it is made; the crumbs continue to soften and the bottom crust goes slack overnight.
Crumb pie belongs to the broad nineteenth-century category of "mock" or make-do pies, alongside vinegar pie, cracker pie and the mock apple pie later printed on cracker boxes. All of them solve the same problem: a pie was expected at the table, and fresh fruit was out of season or out of reach. Bread crumbs supply the body, sugar and vinegar between them suggest the sweet-tart balance of stewed apple, and nutmeg supplies an aroma commonly used in baked fruit dishes of the period. The Dixie Cook Book, like many compiled community cookbooks of its period, credits each contribution by name, and Miss Sylvia J. Courter's recipe is written in the shorthand such collections used: crumbs by the tea-cup, vinegar and water by the eye, and no oven temperature at all.