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Apple Pie
1 teaspoon butter teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon lemon juice teaspoon nutmeg Few gratings lemon rind Line pie plate with paste. Pare, core and cut apples and fill the pie. Mix the dry ingredients and lemon juice, and sprinkle over apples. Dot over with butter. Wet edges of under crust, cover with upper crust, pressing the edges close together. Bake in a hot oven 450° F. until crust is brown then 350° F. until the fruit is cooked.
The ingredient list here has come down to us damaged — the fractions have dropped out and the sugar and apples never made it onto the page at all. The method is sound and complete, so treat the list as a checklist rather than a formula.
- Missing quantities"teaspoon cinnamon" and "teaspoon nutmeg" have both lost a leading fraction, which cannot now be recovered from the page. Sugar is absent from the list entirely though "mix the dry ingredients" assumes it; a two-crust pie of tart apples generally takes something in the region of 1/2 to 3/4 cup. The apples themselves are unquantified.
- The stray pint of rhubarbThe line "1 pint rhubarb" appears to be intrusion from an adjacent recipe on the original page and has nothing to do with the apple pie. Ignore it.
- Paste means pastry"Paste" is the period word for pie dough, and "line pie plate with paste" assumes you have a double-crust quantity already made. A standard two-crust recipe using about 2 cups flour fills a nine-inch plate.
- The two-stage bakeThis is the one instruction worth following exactly. The 450°F start sets and browns the bottom crust before the apple juices soak into it; dropping to 350°F afterwards lets the fruit cook through without the top scorching. Figure 15 minutes hot, then 30 to 40 minutes at the lower heat.
- Sealing the crustWetting the lower edge with water and pressing firmly is the whole of the seal here -- there is no crimping instruction and no egg wash. Cut two or three vents in the top crust, which the original does not mention, or the steam will force the seam open.
- Judging doneness"Until the fruit is cooked" means the juices are bubbling thickly through the vents and a thin knife meets no resistance in the centre. Apples that squeak against the blade need longer regardless of the clock.
- YieldThe original gives no pan size or yield; the quantities suit an ordinary two-crust pie. Let it stand before cutting or the filling will run.
Apple pie in a cookbook of this era needed no introduction and got none -- the entry gives only the seasoning proportions and the oven schedule. The lemon juice and grated rind supply acidity, and numbered oven temperatures of this kind belong to a period when thermometers and adjustable ranges had made them meaningful; a cook working a wood stove a generation earlier could only describe an oven as hot or slack.