Very Plain Pie-Crust

Sift a quart of flour into a pan. Mix together, with a knife, a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, and a quarter of a pound of lard, and when they are well blended mix them with the flour, and form them into a dough with as little water as possible - the water being very cold. Use ice water in summer. Avoid touching the paste with your hands, but use a knife almost entirely. If your hand is warm, do not rub butter into flour with it, but managa all the mixing with a knife. If you have a cool hand, you may rub the butter into the flour, and reserve the lard to spread all over the sheet of dough. Boll it out lightly. Dredge with flour, fold it, spread on the lard, and roll it again. Divide it into two pieces, and roll out each of them. Trim the edges nicely, and make them to fit your pie-dish. If one is for bottom crust, roll it out thinnest towards the centre, having for this part of the process a very small rolling-pin, but a finger long. Grease with lard a deep dish, or soup plate, and line it with the bottom crust. Fill it up with the fruit you intend for the pie, sweetened well with brown sugar, and heaping the fruit high in the centre. Cover it with a lid of paste, trim, and notch the edges neatly, and make a cross slit in the top; set it in the oven, and bake it steadily till it is a light brown. When it seems to be done, lift up a small piece at one side to try if the fruit is soft. Apples for pies should be pared, cored, and sliced very thin. If green, stew them before they are baked.

If you have saved enough of the dripping of roast beef, veal, or pork, (skimmed and put away in a covered crock) it will be good shortening for common pies - far superior to salt butter, and much lighter. Salt renders pastry hard and heavy.

Never use suet for baked paste. It is only for dumplings and pot-pies. Bread dough, or any dough made with yeast, is not good when boiled, becoming tough and leathery, and being very unwholesome.

Except in very plain country places a fruit pie, 29 with two crusts, (under and upper) is now seen but rarely. Meat pies, or birds, however, should have two crusts. The gravy is a great improvement to the under one. English people usually make their fruit pies with a top-crust only, putting a turned down tea-cup under the centre of the lid to collect the juice, (of course removing the cup when the pie is cut.) It is a good method in a country where the cost of flour is high.

Too much economy in the shortening will infallibly make the crust very poor, hard, heavy, and unwholesome. If you cannot afford dessert paste, do not attempt pies at all; but substitute a plain charlotte, or slices of bread and butter, covered with stewed fruit, sweetened, and laid in a deep dish.

Common Fruit Pies

Make the paste as above. For baking, use only apples that are juicy, and rather sour. If green, stew them before they are put in the pie, and make them very sweet with brown sugar. Peaches should be peeled and quartered, leaving out the stones. Of cherries, take the large red juicy pie cherries. Black cherries, (when baked) go all to stones, and they are not worth the trouble of cooking, though very good when eaten from the trees. Currants must be carefully stripped from the stems, and made very sweet. Gooseberries must be "top and tailed," and require great sweetening; so do cranberries. Blackberries make good plain pies, and are very juicy if ripe. All pies should be well filled.

Pies may be made of ripe wild grapes, stewed in molasses or maple sugar.