Home › The World's Kitchen › Apple Pie
Apple Pie
Peel, core and slice six apples, place in a bowl with two ounces sugar and one teaspoon vanilla essence, turn them well in the seasoning, then proceed to prepare and bake the pie.
This is a filling formula rather than a full recipe — the book assumes you already know how to line a plate with pastry and bake it. A few figures need filling in.
- Two ounces sugarThat is a weight, not a volume: a scant third of a cup of granulated sugar. It is a restrained amount by modern standards, and if the apples are tart you may want more.
- Six applesRoughly 2 lb whole, giving about 6 cups sliced — enough for one 9-inch pie, serving six to eight. Use a firm variety that holds its shape, such as Braeburn, Northern Spy or Granny Smith.
- Vanilla essenceRead this as vanilla extract. Strength varied a good deal in commercial extracts of the period, so a teaspoon may read as assertive; use less if you want the apple to lead.
- The maceration is the pointTurning the fruit -- The recipe says only to turn the slices well in the sugar and vanilla; no standing time is given. If the fruit does sit and throw juice, either drain it off, or toss the fruit with a tablespoon of flour or two teaspoons of cornstarch so the pie is not soupy.
- No thickener, no spice, no butterThe original relies on the apples alone. If you want the familiar version, a dot of butter over the fruit and a pinch of cinnamon or grated nutmeg are consistent with period practice and change nothing structurally.
- BakingThe book gives no oven instruction here. As a modern default for a pie of this size, a hot oven to set the pastry (about 425F for the first 20 minutes) then 350F for a further 30 to 35 minutes, until the juice bubbles thickly. If you use a top crust, cut steam slits; cool at least an hour before slicing or the filling will run.
Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, wrote in the compressed professional shorthand of a man used to giving instructions to cooks who already knew their trade — which is why this entry stops at "proceed to prepare and bake the pie" and expects the reader to find the pastry elsewhere in the book. The vanilla is the telling detail: American apple pie of the nineteenth century was more usually seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, mace or rosewater, and vanilla essence appears more often as commercial extracts became cheaper and more widely available around the turn of the century, though the connection is inference rather than documented. Apple pie itself is far older than its American reputation suggests; recipes for apples baked in pastry appear in English cookery from the late medieval period onward, and the dish crossed the Atlantic with the early colonists along with the orchard trees themselves.