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June 9
Menu: Asparagus; Roast Beef; Horseradish Relish; Bean Salad; Franconia Potatoes; Cherry Pie; Coffee Cherry Pie-1 quart ripe cherries, 1 yolk egg, 3 tablespoons cream, and 1/2 cup sugar. Wash cherries, stem and place in colander over dish to catch juice. Place thin layer of the following dough on shallow pan, sprinkle top with breadcrumbs. Spread stoned cherries over evenly. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Beat yolk well, add cream and cherry juice and pour over all. Bake in hot oven until well browned at bottom. The dough is made as follows: 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg. Mix dry ingredients. Work in Crisco with finger tips; add egg; mix. Toss on slightly floured board and roll a ¼ inch thick. This makes enough dough for large oblong pan. a Scotch Broth
This is a German-style cherry kuchen rather than a double-crust pie: a thin sweet dough pressed into a sheet pan, cherries on top, and a thin yolk-and-cream custard poured over. A few things in the original need translating.
- The breadcrumbs are the hingeThe layer of crumbs between dough and fruit soaks up the cherry juice and keeps the base from turning to paste. Do not skip it, and use dry crumbs, not fresh ones.
- "Hot oven"The book gives no temperature; a hot oven of the period is generally taken as roughly 400 to 425F. At that heat the thin base sets and browns before the fruit floods it. Timing will depend on the pan, so judge by a browned underside as the recipe says rather than by the clock.
- A quart of cherriesAbout 1.25 to 1.5 lb as bought, giving roughly 3 cups once stemmed and stoned. The recipe says only "ripe" cherries; sour cherries are the usual choice for a cake of this kind and stand up better to the sugar than sweet ones.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold under the same name though reformulated over the years to cut trans fats. Any solid vegetable shortening works; butter gives a better flavour in a dough this sweet.
- The dough is stiffOne tablespoon of fat, one cup of flour and one egg makes a firm, biscuit-like sweet pastry, not a flaky crust. If it will not come together on the board, a teaspoon or two of cold water or cream is fair; press it into the pan with your fingers if rolling fights you.
- "Large oblong pan"A quarter-sheet or 9 by 13 inch pan, with a rim, since the custard is poured over loose. Grease it.
- The custardOne yolk, three tablespoons cream and the caught cherry juice makes a thin liquid that sets only lightly. Use the juice that drains in the colander, not extra; too much and it will not set at all.
- YieldCut into squares, a 9 by 13 pan gives 10 to 12 servings. Best eaten the day it is made, while the base is still crisp underneath.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil to teach American cooks what to do with Procter & Gamble's new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, introduced in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter. This cherry "pie" is really a sheet-pan Kirschkuchen of the sort common in German and Austrian home baking: a thin dough base, crumbs to catch the juice, fruit, and a light custard poured over. Its placement in a coffee menu shows how such recipes were treated in Anglo-American cookery of the period, as an afternoon coffee cake rather than a dessert pie.