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NOVEMBER |
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By Alice Ross American as apple pie?
And the first American cookbook, a slim work written in newly independent America by Amelia Simmons (1796,) continued the tradition by offering fourteen. The crusts were as important and as varied as the fillings, ranging from cookie-like delicacies to stiffer crusts for meat pies, and rich flaky puff pastries. But relatively little is known about the pans that held them. It was the meat pie that started it all off centuries earlier. Traditionally these crusts were tall, straight-sided constructions with sealed-on floors and lids, originally called "coffins." They held assorted meats and sauce components and were baked at length, as is a modern casserole. They appear in Dutch or French paintings, usually without any evidence of a special pan. The crust itself was the pan, its pastry tough and inedible. It would seem that the dropping costs of sweetening and spices enabled the development of sweet pies. Colonial American easily followed English precedent again, as maturing orchards and abundant wood fuels kept home-bake ovens active. Simmons’ recipes for three kinds of apple pie alone and one apple tart (not to mention those with other fillings,) reflected their increasing popularity, following the more limited offerings of Glasse and E. Smith’s Compleat Housewife (London, 1758) before her. Those
early pies were far more varied but not vastly different from the ones
we enjoy today. Some required different kinds of apples, perhaps a cream and
egg custard mixture, or reconstituted dried apples. All other fruits in
season were put to the fillings—peaches, pears, cherries, and berries. And
some vegetables—squash and pumpkin, for example—were adapted as well.
There were basic custard and cheese (cottage cheese forms) such as chess pie
or custard pie. And in regional American variations, one enjoyed molasses
and vinegar fillings. These sweet pies were often baked in a
"pie-dish." Indeed, Simmons’ recipe for "Orange
Pudding" (actually a pie,) directed the cook to put the filling mixture
"into rich puff-paste, which let be double round the edges of the
dish" [italics mine]. These were sometimes made of tin, probably in recognizable slant-sided form. Others were of redware, sometimes with only slightly rounded concave cavity and no angled sides, perhaps a soup or dinner plate. In such a dish it was still possible to construct a high pie. With enough dough, the top and bottom crusts were rolled and crimped together to build up the sides, essential for holding in the juices. These were often shaped into standing rims by use of many ornamental patterns. Some fillings were conglomerates of fruit and meat, enriched by wines, spices, and flavorful fats, and called mince meat. For these, Glasse described a good pie dish as "a little dish, something bigger than a soup-plate," and in another place referred to "tin patties" of various sizes. Sometimes pies were made more festive by shaping them into miniature sizes (variably called tarts or torts) and filled with preserves. Simmons drops some clues about the pans in her suggestion that one should use "small shallow pans or saucers," and her recommendations, in a special note, that "pastry pans, or saucers, must be buttered lightly before the paste is laid on. If glass or china be used, have only a top crust." And
then there were the age-old variations on meat pies. The favorites—chicken
or veal pot pie—were made with altogether different crusts sometimes laced
with mashed potato, and a rich meat and sauce filling devoid of the
vegetables we expect today. In coastal kitchens there were fish pies and
seafood pies of clam, oyster, and lobster. Simmons suggests "deep
dishes" for meat pies of her period, and E. Smith’s London cookbook (1758 ed.) requires "pattypans" for her "Fish Pye," a large representation of whole flounders, although our modern concept of pattypans would indicate small individual cups. American pies were baked in large numbers in the family’s brick oven. Presumably they baked well with cooler temperatures than bread, and were set into the oven after the bread came out—the second stage in a succession based on dropping temperatures. As they were placed directly on the floor of the oven, the additional shot of heat probably sealed the bottom crust fairly quickly, just as a modern oven does when using the bottom oven rack. Early recipes sometimes recommended sealing the bottom crusts with melted butter, bread crumbs, or sugar to prevent sogging, a good trick when baking at lower temperatures, or at any temperature, for that matter. All
of this pie flurry transferred readily to the woodstove innovations, and
flourished. No longer a requisite player in the mammoth weekly baking, pies
could be done in either large or small quantities, and on whim. Later
nineteenth-century diarists in rural New York, recording their work, noted
routinely that on Saturdays they "baked bread and
With origins in the earlier centuries, pie making accessories were now on the rise. Yankee ingenuity came up with myriad variations on earlier pie stamps, crimpers and jaggers, and pie birds, useful for beautifying or releasing undesirable steam. Wire pie lifters allowed the cook to remove a hot pie from her oven without burning herself; wire racks aided in cooling and storing, and pie safes stored the goodies (and other provisions) against flies and mice!
By the twentieth century, "pie tins" were cheap and common. Some incorporated a rotating pin to release the bottom crust. One of my first acquisitions was a "Ladies Night at the Movies" giveaway. More recently local general stores in the Adirondacks were selling local pies in deposit pie tins, but the tins were easily worth the hostage ten cents. Homemade pies are unbeatable, and not nearly as daunting as one is led to believe. After all, if everyone (good cooks and bad) made them, the process must have been manageable. Pie making in busy households today is not as hard as it may seem, as it can be done handily ahead in stages. Pie crusts freeze well, and may be prepared in numbers, shaped in their tins and stacked for minimal use of freezer space.
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Yes,
because the crust (wheat flour and lard) were intrinsically English, as
were the apples, butter, and even bread crumb thickeners. And the sugar,
cinnamon and nutmeg came from the far flung British Empire to enrich the
affluent British pantry. Indeed, the pie form itself was an English
specialty, and unrivaled in other European cuisines. One has only to look in
the early English cookbooks to see the large numbers of pie recipes—both
sweet and savory—that fill the pages. Hannah Glasse’s cookbook (London,
1747) listed forty-three! 
