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Fruit Pie
Mrs. M. P. Carson.
Must be baked in a two-quart tin basin ; to give it the right shape the basin must be of nearly the same size top and bottom; first make a nice pie crust; put a layer of it in the bottom, but not around the side of the dish; then a layer of chopped sour apples, two inches thick ; then a layer of chopped raisins; sprinkle sugar over this, pieces of butter, and any spice you like-cloves and nutmeg are nice; another layer of crust and fruit, etc., until your dish is full; put a crust on the top; bake slowly for two hours; when done, turn bottom upwards on a plate, and before putting it on the table sprinkle fine sugar over it. It is quite as good when warmed again as when first baked. It takes one pound of raisins, ten or twelve good sized apples, two large cups of sugar, more if you like.
This is a deep layered apple-and-raisin pie baked in a plain tin basin and turned out like a pudding. Two details make or break it: a straight-sided vessel and a genuinely slow oven.
- The basinA two-quart tin basin of nearly equal diameter top and bottom is what allows the pie to be inverted without collapsing. A 2-quart straight-sided cake tin or souffle dish works; a sloping pie plate does not. Grease it well, since there is no pastry up the sides to protect the metal from the fruit juices.
- "Bake slowly"The book gives no temperatures; a slow oven is generally taken as somewhere around 300-325F. Two hours at that heat suits a dish this deep, where the apple layers have to soften through several inches of fruit. Going hotter to shorten the time risks raw apple in the middle and a scorched top crust.
- Sour applesTart cooking apples such as Bramley, Granny Smith or Northern Spy (Bramley collapses to a puree; the other two hold their shape more). Ten or twelve good-sized apples is roughly 4 lb whole, around 3 lb once peeled and cored. Chopped, not sliced, as written.
- SugarTwo large cups is generous by modern taste, especially with a pound of raisins already in the dish. Start at one to one and a half cups distributed between the layers and judge by the tartness of the apples.
- RaisinsA full pound of raisins to 4 lb of apples gives a dense, dark, almost mincemeat character. Chopping them, as directed, keeps them from forming chewy pockets. Ordinary dark raisins are closer to the 1870s article than golden sultanas.
- "Fine sugar"Superfine or caster sugar, sifted over the turned-out pie. Granulated sugar sits on the surface without dissolving; a whirl in a spice grinder gets you there.
- Turning it outLet it settle 15 to 20 minutes before inverting, so the fruit firms enough to hold shape, but do not let it go cold or the crust will stick. Run a knife around the edge first and invert onto a warmed plate.
- YieldA two-quart pie serves perhaps six to eight. The recipe's own note that it reheats well is worth taking at face value.
A pie built in layers inside a deep basin and turned out to serve sits on the line between English fruit pudding and American pie, and this recipe belongs to both traditions. Crust on the bottom and top but not the sides looks like a frugal builder's trick: it uses less pastry and lets the fruit make its own thick syrup against the tin. The apple-and-raisin combination, heavy with cloves and nutmeg, is close to the sweet meatless mincemeat that Victorian households are often said to have made when they had no suet or beef to spare, and the pound of raisins suggests a keeping-fruit dish for the cold months, when barreled sour apples and boxed raisins were what the cellar and the grocer's shelf could supply. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, first published 1874) was compiled from contributions by named local women and sold for charity, which is why the recipe reads like one cook talking to another: the vessel is specified exactly, the sugar is left to taste, and the reheating advice is the kind of thing only someone who has made it repeatedly bothers to write down.