Apple pie

Sometimes you get old recipes right the first time: you decipher the flowery language, you make the right substitutions, you determine the correct proportions. And sometimes, well, you don't.

This is a story of when I got it wrong.

We begin in apple season. I've been buying apples nonstop at the farmers' market every Saturday, and sometimes my friend asks me to pick up her farm share for the week and I wind up with a dozen more apples besides. A few weeks ago, I found myself with more apples than I knew what to do with. So I decided to make a pie. Easy, right?

I turn to my newest cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Mrs. Hannah Glasse, originally published in 1747 and updated in 1805. Hot off the presses! Verbatim, here is what she tells me about how to make apple pie:

"Make a good puff paste crust, lay some round the sides of the dish, pare and quarter apples, and take out the cores, lay a row of apples [t]hick, throw in half the sugar you design for your pie, mince a little lemon peel fine, throw over, and squeeze a little lemon over them, then a few cloves, here and there one, then the rest of your apples, and the rest of your sugar. You must sweeten to your palate, and squeeze a little more lemon. Boil the peeling of the apples and the cores in some fair water, with a blade of mace, till it is very good; strain it, and boil the syrup with a little sugar, till there is but very little and good, pour it into your pie, put on your upper-crust and bake it. You may put in a little quince or marmalade, if you please."

This raises several--okay, many--questions. First, I need to find that puff paste recipe. Second, how many apples? What kind? I suppose I can wing the seasonings, but really, how much sugar should I design for my pie? (And why on earth is this recipe so poetic?)

The recipe for puff paste is no help:

"Take a quarter of a peck of flour, rub in a pound of butter very fine, make it up in a light paste with cold water, just stiff enough to work it up; then roll it out about as thick as a crown-piece, put a layer of butter all over, sprinkle on a little flour, double it up and roll it out again; double it, and roll it out seven or eight times; then it is fit for all sorts of pies and tarts that require a puff-paste."

Upon doing a bit of research, I discover that a quarter of a peck of flour is 2 dry quarts of flour, or 8 cups. This tells me several things: First, this will make WAY more puff paste than I possibly need for one pie. Second, this is probably because most women make a lot of pies and tarts at once (on baking day, for example), unlike our silly modern methods of making one pie at a time when we want it. Third, I need to know how thick a crown-piece is.

Happily, I have some help in the form of Fresh from the Past, a collection of modernized recipes from 18th-century London. The book contains recipes very similar to Mrs. Glasse's puff paste and apple pie, so I set to a makeshift sort of preparation, combining and substituting where I see fit. For example, I design 1/4 cup and 2/3 cup sugar for my pie (divided for that layered effect) as recommended by the modern book. The most troubling part is where I make a syrup of the apple peels, water, and sugar. Most likely this is meant to extract some of the pectin to help the pie gel, but my syrup winds up more watery than pectin-y. Nevertheless, I pour it over the apples, cover the whole thing with a top crust, and bake. Thanks to the mace and cloves, the pie smells heavenly.

And it tastes heavenly, too. The problem? The watery syrup turns the whole dish into pie soup. It never gels, perhaps too because I used a mixture of sweet and tart apples rather than sticking entirely to tart Granny Smiths.

Josh makes a lot of fun of the pie, and I vow to redeem myself later with a new pie. (It's semi-successful.) And I settle down to enjoy the tasty pie soup served over Greek yogurt, which I highly recommend should this happen to you.

Shortbread fans (and a bit about ovens)

It's the last gasp of summer, friends. The air is getting cool at night (sometimes). Stores offer apple cider in big displays. And this week I go back to school.

To mark the occasion, let's look at one more recipe from this summer's Canadian vacation. It's a pretty basic shortbread recipe, one that calls for three ingredients and a modicum of decoration. But things get interesting with the instructions.

First, the original recipe calls for "washed butter." Why would you need to give your butter a bath? According to the many homesteading blogs that encourage you to make your own butter, you have to wash fresh butter well in order to drain away all traces of milk. Otherwise it goes rancid. The only other reason I can think of for using "washed butter" here is to make sure your butter is, well, buttery. Shortbread depends on a specific blend of butter, flour, and sugar, and there's no room for anything else.

Once you've mixed all the ingredients and prepared the cookies, you're instructed to "bake in a slow oven (325 F)." What?

cooking range, c. 1910

The phrase "slow oven" comes from a time before ovens had regulated temperatures. You'll find it in early American cookbooks when food was baked in Dutch ovens and in later ones when women used monstrous ranges, the predecessor to today's stove-oven combination. Until the 1920s, when most families had made the transition to gas ovens, women had to rely on their understanding of heat to put on enough wood or coals to bake bread, or to let the coals burn out to bake something more delicate, like cookies. Even into the 1920s and 1930s, some families didn't have "heat regulators," as the editors of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book called them. And if that was the case, "judgment and experience must be the guides."

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, from where this recipe originates, used both points of reference ("slow oven" and a specific temperature) because many Americans were in the middle of switching over when it was published in 1930. Some readers had heat regulators, while others didn't. It's fascinating to see how the smallest details can illuminate a turning point in American domestic history.

I am hopelessly reliant on temperatures, just as I am pretty dependent on recipes. But I was pleased to see that when reading colonial recipes, my interpretation of "slow oven" as 300 to 325 F was right on the mark.

Shortbread Fans
(slightly adapted from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 325 F (yes, we use temperatures around these parts). In a medium bowl, whisk flour and sugar together. Work in butter with your fingertips until well blended.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut out rounds with a measuring cup. Slice each round in half and press each half-moon four times with the tip of a knife, creating a fan-like decoration. Bake for 10 minutes at 325 F, or until browned on the bottom.


Works cited: Cooking range photo from Family Lineages and History.

Himmel torte

We just returned from a week in Maine with Josh's family. A gorgeous lake house near the town of Casco served as our home base, and we spent the week swimming, kayaking, reading, and playing games. The men-folk cooked almost every meal on the grill, while the women-folk engaged in some serious salad-making and baking. I even hauled out The "Settlement" Cook Book to make a belated birthday cake. (Yes, I packed it. No, you shouldn't be surprised.)

That week is still on my mind, for the sense of utter relaxation it gave me and for the cooler weather we left behind. And also for the cake I baked. You see, it was kind of a disaster, and I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong.

This was one of those recipes that was devilishly hard to interpret, thanks to its sheer lack of specificity. With the frosting, for example, the only instructions were: "One pint thick sour cream, vanilla, two tablespoons cornstarch and sugar mixed. Boil." How much vanilla? Do you combine one tablespoon each of cornstarch and sugar, or two each? There were no reassuring comments from the cookbook writer, either, telling me not to worry when my cake batter was barely spreadable. As a modern cook, it's frustrating to encounter old recipes that assume you know everything.

So I made some of it up, crowd-sourced interpretations for some of the stranger instructions, and hoped for the best. The resulting cake (ambitiously titled "Himmel torte," or "heaven torte") was flaky and crumbly, but the jam helped hold some of it together. Once frosted, you could hardly tell this cake was a disaster. And once served, it was pretty darn tasty.

I might redo this cake at some point in the future, but for now I'll leave you with the recipe I cobbled together. Try it if you want--it actually turned out okay.


Himmel Torte
(adapted from The "Settlement" Cook Book)

for the cake:
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (3 sticks), softened
4 tbsp sugar
2 eggs + 2 egg yolks
4 cups flour
grated rind of 1 orange

for the frosting:
about 2 tbsp cinnamon sugar
about 3/4 cup raspberry jam
1 pint sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp flour or cornstarch
2 tbsp sugar
2 egg whites

to make the cake:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease two round 8 x 8 cake pans and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and yolks, one at a time, stirring well after each addition. Add the orange rind and flour, mixing gently until just blended. (Use your hands if you have to, and I won't tell.) Spread in the prepared pans and bake at 350 F until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20-30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

to make the frosting:
In a medium pan over a medium flame, heat the sour cream, vanilla, flour, and sugar until bubbling. Mix in the egg whites until well-blended and remove from heat. Let cool and move to the refrigerator to set, about 1 hour.

Once the cakes have cooled, turn one layer out onto a large plate. Sprinkle the top with the cinnamon sugar and spread evenly with the raspberry jam. Turn the second layer out on top of the jam. Spread the cooled sour cream frosting on top and sides and serve.