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Pies. Part 3 |
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Free Books / Cooking / The American Housewife / | |
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Pies. Part 3 |
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This section is from the "The American Housewife" book, by Experienced Lady. Also available from Amazon: The American Housewife.
For one pie, take a couple of good sized fresh lemons, squeeze out the juice, and mix it with half a pint of molasses, or sufficient sugar to make the juice sweet. Chop the peel fine, line a deep pie plate with your pastry, then sprinkle on a layer of your chopped lemon peel, turn in part of the mixed sugar or molasses, and juice, then cover the whole with pie crust, rolled very thin - put in another layer of peel, sweetened juice, and crust, and so on, till all the lemon is used. Cover the whole with a thick crust, and bake the pie about half an hour.
Cherries and blackberries for pies should be ripe. Bake them in deep pie plates, sweeten them with sugar, and put in cloves or cinnamon to the taste. Bake them about half an hour.
Grapes make the best pies when very tender and green. If not very small, they should be stewed and strained, to get out the seeds, before they are made into pies - sweeten them to the taste when stewed. They do not require any spice. If made into a pie without stewing, put to each layer of grapes a thick layer of sugar, and a table-spoonful of water.
Currants and gooseberries are the best for pies when of a full growth, just before they begin to turn red - they are tolerably good when ripe. Currants mixed with ripe raspberries or mulberries, make very nice pies. Green currants and gooseberries for pies are not apt to be sweet enough without the sugar is scalded in before they are baked, as the juice of the currants is apt to run out while they are baking, and leave the fruit dry. Stew them on a moderate fire, with a tea-cup of water to a couple of quarts of currants - as soon as they begin to break, add the sugar, and let it scald in a few minutes. When baked without stewing, put to each layer of fruit a thick layer of sugar. There should be as much as a quarter of a pound of sugar to a pint of currants, to make them sufficiently sweet. Green currant pies are good sweetened with molasses and sugar mixed.
Prunes that are too dry to eat without stewing, can be made into good pies. Turn enough boiling water on the prunes to cover them, set them on a few coals, and let them remain till swelled out plump. If there is not water sufficient to make a nice syrup for the pies, add more, and season them with cinnamon or cloves. The juice and grated peel of a lemon gives them a fine flavor. Add sugar to the taste, and bake them in deep pie plates.
Halve the pumpkin, take out the seeds - rinse the pumpkin, and cut it into small strips - stew them, over a moderate fire, in just sufficient water to prevent their burning, to the bottom of the pot. When stewed soft, turn off the water, and let the pumpkin steam, over a slow fire, for fifteen or twenty minutes, taking care that it does not burn. Take it from the fire, and strain it, when cool, through a sieve. If you wish to have the pies very rich, put to a quart of the stewed pumpkin two quarts of milk, and twelve eggs. If you like them plain, put to a quart of the pumpkin one quart of milk, and three eggs. The thicker the pie is of the pumpkin, the less will be the number of eggs required for them. One egg, with a table-spoonful of flour, will answer for a quart of the pumpkin, if very lit-tie milk is used. Sweeten the pumpkin with sugar, and very little molasses - the sugar and eggs should be beaten together. Ginger, the grated rind of a lemon, or nutmeg, is good spice for the pies. Pumpkin pies require a very hot oven. The rim of the pies is apt to get burnt before the inside is baked sufficiently. On this account, it is a good plan to heat the pumpkin scalding hot when prepared for pies, before turning it into the pie plates. The pies should be baked as soon as the plates are filled, or the under crust to the pies will be clammy. The more the number of eggs in the pies, the less time will be required to bake them. If you have pumpkins that have begun to decay, or those that are frozen, they can be kept several months, in cold weather, by cutting the good part up, stewing it till soft, then stirring it, and adding sugar and molasses, to make it very sweet. Make it strong of ginger, then scald the seasoning in well. Keep it in a stone jar, in a cool place - whenever you wish to use any of it for pies, take out the quantity you wish, and put milk and eggs to it.
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