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Apple-Jam Pie
Peel and core six medium apples, cut them in halves then finely slice and place them in a bowl with an ounce of sugar and half teaspoon vanilla essence, turn them well in the seasoning. Roll out on lightly-floured table a quarter-pound pie paste very thin. Line the inside of buttered pie plate with paste, spread four tablespoons raspberry marmalade on the bottom of plate, neatly arrange the apples over. Egg the edges, cover the pie with a layer of paste, press edges together, trim superfluous paste around the border, make a few incisions on top, lightly egg the surface, then set in oven for thirty minutes. Remove, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over, and serve.
A professional's shorthand: no oven temperature, no pan size, and a pastry quantity that assumes you already know how thin to roll. The details below fill in what the original takes for granted.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A double-crust fruit pie of this size wants 400-425F for the full thirty minutes, hot enough to set and brown the thin pastry before the apples flood it.
- Quarter-pound of pasteFour ounces of dough will only cover a top and bottom if rolled genuinely paper-thin, and on a small plate; the recipe gives no pan size. For a standard 9-inch pie plate you will need considerably more shortcrust for two layers.
- Raspberry marmaladeIn this period marmalade meant any thick fruit preserve, not strictly citrus. Use seedless raspberry jam; four tablespoons over the base is a moisture barrier as much as a flavouring.
- Only an ounce of sugarThat is about two tablespoons for six apples, which is very restrained by modern standards because the jam beneath carries the sweetness. Taste the apples first and add more only if they are sharp.
- Choose a firm appleSliced thin and given half an hour, a soft dessert apple collapses to sauce. Bramley, Granny Smith or another firm-fleshed cooking apple holds its shape.
- "Egg the edges"Beaten whole egg brushed on the rim to glue the two crusts, then again over the top for colour. Egg yolk thinned with a little water browns more deeply if you want a darker finish.
- Powdered sugarIn this sort of book the term usually means sugar ground fine rather than modern cornstarch-cut icing sugar; either will do dusted over the pie while it is still warm. It will dissolve into the glaze if the surface is wet, so wait a minute or two.
- YieldNo yield is stated; six apples on a single plate will serve about six. Letting it stand a little before cutting helps keep the jam layer from running.
The prose is that of a professional's compendium: no temperature, no pan size, no yield, just a sequence of actions addressed to someone who has made a hundred pies already. Spreading jam under the fruit is an old pastrycook's trick with two purposes at once, sweetening the base and sealing the crust against apple juice. "Marmalade" here appears to carry its older, broader sense of a thick boiled fruit preserve, a usage traceable to the Portuguese marmelada, quince paste, and narrowed to citrus in general English use only later. The vanilla essence may also be a marker of period: by the early twentieth century commercial vanilla extract was cheap and widely stocked.