Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Lemon Raisin Pie
Lemon Raisin Pie
Anonymous.
One cup of sugar, one lemon, one cup of raisins, one cup water; chop lemon and raisins fine, cook in the water three-quarters of an hour.
This is a filling, not a whole pie: the book assumes you know how to line a plate and put a lid on it. Everything below fills one 8- or 9-inch double-crust pie.
- The hinge: cook it down, then cool itThree-quarters of an hour over low heat is meant to soften the lemon peel and plump the raisins into a thick, jammy mass. Pour it into raw pastry hot and thin and the bottom crust will never set; let it cool to room temperature first.
- Use the whole lemon, but not the seeds"One lemon" means rind, pith, flesh and juice, chopped fine. Pick out every seed before chopping, as crushed lemon pips are markedly bitter and will not cook out.
- Watch the waterOne cup of water over 45 minutes will largely boil away. Use a heavy pan, keep it at a bare simmer, cover it, and add a splash more water if it tightens before the peel is tender.
- RaisinsRaisins of the period were often seeded muscatels, larger and more assertive than modern Thompson seedless. Any dark raisin works; chopping them, as directed, matters more than the variety.
- ThickeningNo flour or cornstarch is given, and the finished filling relies on reduction, the sugar, and the pectin in the lemon peel and pith. If it still slumps when cooled, a tablespoon of flour or cornstarch slaked in cold water and cooked in for a minute brings it to a sliceable set.
- Baking, since the book does not sayA double-crust pie of this kind wants a hot start and a moderate finish: 425F for about 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 350F for 25 to 30 minutes until the crust is browned. Cut vents in the lid.
- Yield and sweetnessOne cup of sugar against one whole lemon and a cup of raisins is sharp by modern standards but not unpleasantly so. It fills one pie and serves six to eight in small wedges.
Raisin pie was a pantry pie, made in the months when no fresh fruit was to be had and a jar of dried grapes was the only sweet thing on the shelf. In Pennsylvania German households the plain version is still called "funeral pie," traditionally because it could be assembled from stores at short notice and kept well enough to carry to a mourning house. The lemon here does the work that a mountain of sugar otherwise would, cutting the flat sweetness of the raisins and adding the bitter edge of the peel; whole-lemon fillings of this type sit somewhere between a mincemeat and a marmalade. Its appearance in The Home Cook Book, an early North American compiled charity cookbook, is characteristic of the genre: contributed anonymously, written in a single breathless line, and assuming that any woman reading it already knew how to make pastry and how hot to build her fire.