Apple Pie
3 cups sliced apple 1 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/8 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup Karo Flaky pie crust Line a pie plate with the pastry. Sift the cornstarch over the apple and mix with the Karo. Add a trace of salt. Sift a very little cornstarch over the crust, put in the apple mixture, making it as level as possible. Moisten the edge of the crust, put on the top which should be slashed, brush over with Mazola and bake about thirty-five minutes in an oven, hot at first, 375 degrees F.-then moderated.
A corn-products advertising recipe, sweetened entirely with corn syrup rather than sugar and thickened with cornstarch. The proportions work, but the oven directions and timing need translating.
- Karo means corn syrupThree-quarters of a cup of it is the whole sweetener here. The recipe does not say which Karo; light (white) was the usual choice for fruit. Corn syrup is generally reckoned less sweet than sugar by volume and adds moisture, so the filling is likely to stay looser and glossier than a sugar-sweetened pie; the cornstarch is doing the thickening that sugar-and-flour usually does.
- Mazola is corn oilBrushing the top crust with a neutral oil gives colour but no shine or richness. Milk, cream or an egg wash will brown better if you are not bound to the original.
- The oven instruction, in numbers"Hot at first, 375 degrees F.—then moderated" means starting at 375F to set the bottom crust and then dropping the heat for the remainder. The book gives no second figure or timing, so a reduction to about 350F after the first quarter-hour is a reasonable reading rather than a stated one. Modern practice often starts hotter still, around 425F, for the same purpose.
- Thirty-five minutes is optimisticThree cups of raw sliced apple rarely soften through in 35 minutes at these temperatures. Bake until the filling bubbles thickly through the slashes and a knife meets no resistance — usually 45 to 55 minutes in a 9-inch plate.
- Cornstarch on the crustThe "very little cornstarch" sifted over the bottom pastry is a moisture barrier against a soggy base. It works; so does a thin scatter of semolina or dry breadcrumbs.
- Choose a firm appleA variety that holds its shape suits this filling. Bramley collapses to sauce; Granny Smith, Braeburn or Northern Spy hold slices.
- Pastry quantity"Flaky pie crust" is given without amount, presumably because pastry is dealt with elsewhere in the book. Enough for a double-crust 9-inch pie is about 2 1/2 cups flour and 1 cup fat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no plate size, and three cups of sliced apple makes a shallow filling, enough for a small pie of perhaps eight or nine inches and six servings. Let it cool at least an hour -- corn-syrup fillings are runny hot and set as they cool.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose brands — Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, Karo syrup, Mazola oil — are named throughout the recipe. Karo was introduced in the early twentieth century and was pushed hard as a general household sweetener, and pamphlets like this one existed to teach cooks to reach for it in places where they would ordinarily reach for sugar. Corn syrup had a real practical argument behind it in pie: it does not crystallise, and it keeps a fruit filling soft and glossy rather than grainy. The recipe is also a small record of how thoroughly the American corn refining industry had, by this period, placed a starch, a syrup and an oil in the same kitchen cupboard, and of how promotional cookbooks worked — the dish is ordinary on purpose, so that the brand names carry all the novelty.