Maybe the era of pies has passed. When was the last time you got excited about a new pie recipe? Pastry chefs snub pie in favor of its Mediterranean cousins, crostadas and galettes. Even Grandma gets her pie filling from a can these days, and her crusts are made by Pillsbury.
This isn’t to say there aren’t talented home bakers, chefs and cookbook authors out there still doing magical things with crusts and fillings, but they could use some reinforcements or at least some encouragement, especially this time of year. The pumpkins and apples of autumn are long gone, but the berries of spring are still eons away.
When the present is bleak, look to the past.
What, in this deep winter of our pie discontent, can we learn from the pies of yesteryear? Which pie recipes have fallen by the wayside during the march of the decades? Which of these deserve to be reintroduced to the world?
Americans didn’t invent pie. We just think we did. Pies can be traced to ancient Greece and Rome, but it is fair to assume that even those mighty civilizations didn’t have a monopoly on the idea of a tender flat-bread topped or stuffed with something delectable.
Of course, the pies of the United States in its infancy came directly, for the most part, from England. Case in point: “Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery.” Subtitle: “and Booke of Sweetmeats: being a Family Manuscript, curiously copied by an unknown hand sometime in the seventeenth century, which was in her keeping from 1749 to 1799…”
Ye olde pies
According to Karen Hess, who edited a modern edition of the book, the cuisine represented in the collection “is that of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.” That is what many Americans had to work with: outdated English recipes. Updated English recipes weren’t much better: Most English pies were filled with meat, meat and more meat.
In the 1785 edition of “The London Art of Cookery,” John Farley, the “Principal Cook at the London Tavern,” presents a dizzying array of meaty pies, from lamb and veal to calf’s foot and venison. There is even an ox-cheek pie, chock-full of, yes, ox cheek, truffles, morels, hard-boiled eggs and asparagus. Sounds pretty good.
Forty years earlier, “Receipts of Pastry and Cookery,” by Edward Kidder, who ran the first known cooking school in London, also offers a similar assortment of meat pies. Anybody up for tongue pie?
These fleshy pies sound odd to our modern tastes, but we do, after all, enjoy plenty of savory pies–from chicken pot pie and tamale pie to quiches and pizza. What is startling about the 18th Century English meat pies is that many of them were sweet. Kidder gives us a lamb pie that includes raisins, currants, gooseberries, grapes, lemon and sugar. And nearly every cookbook included multiple recipes for minced meat pies, which unlike modern versions actually did have quite a bit of meat in them.
Some English pies were more recognizable, such as simple lemon pies and gooseberry tarts. “Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery” has a charming recipe for a rosehip tart flavored with white wine, cinnamon, ginger and rose water. Even pies that we think of as American, like apple and cherry, are common in English books. And many English “puddings” were actually pies baked with a crust on top, bottom or both. Farley’s “orange pudding” is fairly typical: a custard flavored with orange zest, rose water and orange flower water, and topped by puff pastry.
Only in 1796 was the United States’ culinary independence declared. “American Cookery,” by Amelia Simmons, was the first American cookbook, and specifically called attention to this fact on its title page, claiming that it was “Adapted to This Country and All Grades of Life.”
At first glance, the selection of recipes in “American Cookery” is strikingly similar to the English books of the same era. Here are minced pies and tongue pie. There’s a very English “orange pudding” almost identical to Farley’s. Her version starts thusly: “Put sixteen yolks with half a pound of butter…” (You gotta love that.)
Simmons also is gleefully particular about her ingredients. Consider her advice about preserving butter: “To have sweet butter in dog days, and thro’ the vegetable seasons, send stone pots to honest, neat, and trusty dairy people, and procure it pack’d down in May, and let them be brought in in the night, or cool rainy morning, covered with a clean cloth wet in cold water, and partake of no heat from the horse, and set the pots in the coldest part of your cellar, or in the ice house. Some say that May butter thus preserved, will go into the winter use, better than fall made butter.”
What makes “American Cookery” American are a handful of recipes for Indian puddings, corn breads and “Pompkin” pudding (with a crust). It is regarded as the first modern pumpkin pie and, indeed, you would be hard pressed to tell it apart from the recipe on the back of a can of pumpkin.
“American Cookery,” like its English counterparts, includes simple apple pies. The apple was not native to America, so our national pie … well, it wasn’t ours at first. But by the mid-19th Century apples were commonplace, and one particular recipe called Marlborough pie or Marlborough pudding arose in the Northeast.
“Why New Englanders … chose to honor the British war hero of the war against Napoleon with an apple pudding pie I cannot determine,” Betty Fussell writes in “I Hear America Cooking.”
But the pie’s name is quite telling: Even as Americans established their own cuisine, they were still looking to England as a cultural touchstone. Our culinary maturity was slow in coming. In 1847, Sarah Rutledge in “The Carolina Housewife” complains that “French or English Cookery Books are to be found in every book-store; but these are for French or English servants, and almost always require an apparatus either beyond our reach or to [sic] complicated for our native cooks.” Hilarious translation: Americans needed “The New World Picture Cookery Book for Dummies (of Small Means).”
Real translation: There still weren’t many American cookbooks.
Pushing pie
Eventually, though, why did American bakers embrace the pie and make it greater than before? Partly because they had new ingredients, native to the New World, like rhubarb, pumpkin, sweet potatoes and maple syrup.
Those are the stuff of pie legends. Wild berries abounded. And early Americans, scrabbling to eke a living from the land, had to make do with what little they had. Throwing some ingredients in a pastry and adding a lot of sugar is a fine way of making humble and generally unappealing ingredients such as cranberries, pumpkin and rhubarb enjoyable for all.
Also, Americans worked hard, and a single pie has 2,000 to 2,500 calories. In other words, pies are fuel. Pleasant fuel.
Pies are adaptable too. Refined sugar was expensive, but maple syrup, molasses, honey and sorghum worked just fine. Settlers in the Midwest and West boiled down apple cider until it was thick and syrupy, and with a couple of eggs it made as fine a pie as you could hope for.
It’s that from-the-pantry character that, especially in winter, makes us appreciate pies all the more.
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A celebration of pie
National Pie Day is Jan. 23. Created by the American Pie Council, based in Lake Forest, it is dedicated to the celebration of pie. For recipes and more information go to piecouncil.org.
Floral custard pie
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
– This pie was developed as a modernized version of Amelia Simmons’s 1796 “orange pudding.” Until vanilla came along in the 19th Century, floral waters like rose water and orange flower water were common flavorings. They, in addition to a bit of wine and orange zest, give this pie a delicate floral flavor that tastes completely unique to modern palates. You can find floral waters in gourmet stores, Middle Eastern markets, spice shops and some larger supermarkets, including Treasure Island and Meijer; stored properly, they keep for years. You can substitute a teaspoon of vanilla for both of the flower waters here.
1 1/4 cups milk
2 3 cup sugar
1/2 cup each: whipping cream, fine fresh bread crumbs
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons each: melted unsalted butter, riesling wine
Finely grated zest of 1/2 orange
1 teaspoon each: orange flower water, rose water
1/2 teaspoon salt
One 9-inch unbaked pie crust
1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Whisk together milk, sugar, cream, bread crumbs, yolks, melted butter, riesling, zest, orange and rose waters and salt in a large bowl until smooth.
2. Fit the crust into a 9-inch pie pan. Pour mixture into the pie crust. Bake 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350 degrees. Bake until custard sets, about 50 minutes. Cool 1 hour. Serve at room temperature or chilled, if desired.
Nutrition information per serving:
292 calories, 52% of calories from fat, 17 g fat, 8 g saturated fat, 111 mg cholesterol, 31 g carbohydrates, 4 g protein, 336 mg sodium, 0.5 g fiber
Almond pie with raspberry jam
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Yield: 8 servings
This pie is adapted from “The Carolina Housewife,” a cookbook first published in Charleston in 1847. It is similar to recipes published in England. The raspberry jam at the bottom of the pie is a modern touch, and adds a welcome contrast to a very rich custard pie.
1 1/2 cups blanched almond slivers
1/2 stick (1 4 cup) plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup each: sugar, whipping cream
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon orange flower water or vanilla extract
1/4 cup raspberry jam
One 9-inch unbaked pie crust
1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Pulse the almonds in a food processor until they resemble a coarse meal; set aside. Beat the butter and sugar in the bowl of a mixer on medium-low speed until creamy; reduce speed to low. Beat in the cream, eggs and orange flower water until smooth; beat in almonds.
2. Fit the pie crust into a 9-inch pie pan; gently spread the jam on the bottom of the crust. Pour the filling into the crust; bake until the pie is puffed, set and browned on top, about 1 hour. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Nutrition information per serving:
482 calories, 61% of calories from fat, 34 g fat, 13 g saturated fat, 133 mg cholesterol, 40 g carbohydrates, 8 g protein, 180 mg sodium, 2.5 g fiber
Marlborough pie
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
Marlborough pie is an old-pie success story that dates back about 150 years. Though many Americans have never heard of this lemony applesauce custard pie, it is still eaten in New England. Before the advent of refrigeration, Americans preserved apples by burying them or storing them in root cellars so that they would be edible through spring.
5 unpeeled apples, cored, cut into wedges
1/4 cup water
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
One 9-inch unbaked pie crust
5 eggs, beaten
2 3 cup each: sugar, whipping cream
1-2 tablespoons brandy, optional
1. Heat apples and water to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Cover; cook until apples become soft, about 20 minutes. Press the apples through a food mill into a large bowl. Add the lemon juice and zest; set aside.
2. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Fit the pie crust into a 9-inch pie pan; set aside. Beat the eggs and sugar in a medium bowl until light; stir in the cream and brandy. Fold egg mixture into the applesauce mixture. Pour the filling into the pie crust. Bake until filling is puffy and well set, about 1 hour; cool. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Nutrition information per serving:
331 calories, 44% of calories from fat, 16 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 160 mg cholesterol, 42 g carbohydrates, 6 g protein, 193 mg sodium, 4 g fiber
