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Strawberry Pie (Two cupfuls of strawberries)
Two cupfuls of strawberries, three-fourths of a cupful of granulated sugar, one tablespoonful of flour. Mix the sugar with the flour, then with the berries, and bake between two crusts in pie tins.
A bare-bones double-crust berry pie from an era when every cook was assumed to know her pastry and her stove. The original gives no oven temperature and no time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timingBake at 425F for the first 20 minutes to set and brown the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for another 25-30 minutes until juices bubble thickly through the vents. A pie pulled while the filling is still watery will run when cut.
- Pie tin sizeTwo cupfuls of berries is enough for an 8-inch tin. The recipe does not say what size was meant. In a 9-inch pan the filling will be thin and the pie shallow; increase to about 3 cups of fruit.
- Thickening is minimalOne tablespoon of flour for two cups of berries gives a loose, juicy filling that soaks the bottom crust. If you want a sliceable wedge, 2-3 tablespoons of flour, or 1.5 tablespoons of cornstarch, is closer to modern expectations.
- Let the sugared fruit standMixing sugar and flour into the berries and leaving them 15 minutes draws out juice and lets the flour hydrate, so it thickens rather than sitting in dry pockets.
- SugarThree-quarters of a cup is on the sweet side by modern taste. Half a cup plus a squeeze of lemon suits ripe summer fruit.
- Vent the topStrawberries throw a great deal of steam. Cut generous slits or use a lattice, and set the tin on a sheet pan to catch the overflow.
- CrustThe recipe assumes a standard two-crust short paste, given no instruction for it here. Any all-butter or lard double-crust pastry works; keep it cold and do not roll the bottom too thin under a wet filling.
- Yield and servingAn 8-inch pie gives six modest slices. Cool at least two hours before cutting; with this little flour the filling will still be loose.
Strawberry pie sits slightly awkwardly in the American pie tradition: baked double-crust berry pies were the standard treatment for blackberries, huckleberries and cherries, all of which hold their shape and thicken as they cook, while strawberries collapse into juice. Nineteenth-century cookbooks nevertheless treated them the same way; the fresh-fruit-in-a-baked-shell strawberry pie familiar today belongs to a later habit, leaning on starch or gelatin thickening and on refrigeration to hold the finished pie. This recipe belongs to the earlier method, and its very short list of ingredients reflects the compressed style of turn-of-the-century compilations, where pastry was often covered once at the head of the chapter and never repeated. Strawberries were also a largely seasonal fruit, and a pie like this belonged to early summer.