APPLE PIE AND CRANBERRIES.
Is pie as thoroughly American as maple syrup, griddle cakes, and corn bread?
An American is likely to answer "Yes," while an Englishman might say "No."
In the English "Who's Who" the "recreations" of most of the eminent men and women of the time in Europe and America are referred to. Had Théophile Gautier lived to be included in that volume, he would have probably named among his favorite recreations "reading the dictionary," to which he is said to have been much addicted. I could never quite see the fun of this diversion till I made the acquaintance of Murray's wonderful Oxford dictionary, which traces the meaning and history of every word back through the centuries.
Nothing, surely, could be more interesting, for instance, than to read in this work that the first reference to apple pie, so far as known, was as far back as 1590, when Greene, in his "Arcadia," wrote the line: "Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes"—thus proving himself, as I may add, an epicure as well as a poet and a lover.
On another page we read: "The pie appears to have been at first of meat or fish; doubtful or undefined uses appear in 16th century; fruit pies (also called, especially in the north of England and Ireland, in Scotland, and often in the United States, tarts) appear before 1600, the earliest being Apple-Pie."
Were these apple pyes the same as the American apple pie of our day? I doubt it. If they had been, the Britons of our time certainly would make the same kind, but they don't. Their substitute for our fruit pie is the tart, which has only one crust and is otherwise different.
Even if it could be proved that we got our fruit pie from England, shape, contents, and all, I still would claim it as a national American dish—American by right of conquest, improvement, and countrywide use. Millions of American families eat it daily, at lunch or at dinner. The poet Emerson even ate it at breakfast, and when a guest refused it, he was surprised and exclaimed: "What is pie for?"
You can make a fruit pie in the American style in Great Britain or on the Continent, but you cannot duplicate its excellence, for the simple reason that European fruit is rarely as tasty as American fruit.
It must be admitted that in the making of a light, digestible crust most American cooks could learn a lesson from foreign pastry cooks, who would advise them, among other things, to partly bake the lower crust or glaze it with white of egg before the fruit is put in. But, after all, the Flavor of the fruit is the all-important thing, and in that the American pie is supreme.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in his eloquent sermon on apple pie, exclaimed: "But, oh! be careful of the paste! Let it be not like putty, nor rush to the other extreme and make it so flaky that one holds his breath while eating, for fear of blowing it away. Let it not be plain as bread, yet not rich like cake."
Has ever an English divine paid such attention to pie? No; the apple pie is ours, as much as our flag.
But alack and alas, the apple pie is often insulted and maltreated in its own bailiwick by being over-seasoned. Beecher called attention to the fact that "it will accept almost every flavor of every spice," and he mentioned nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon as among those which it is permissible to use.
"Permissible," yes, but most inadvisable. You may say it is a matter of taste, and that you have a right to put as much nutmeg, cinnamon, or lemon extract into your pie or your apple sauce as you please. If you make it for yourself and your family, yes; but not if you make it for a restaurant. The spices named are penetrating and monopolistic; even in small quantities they obliterate the natural Flavor of the apple, or at least modify it in a way obnoxious to those true epicures who like their fruit dishes au naturel, just as they like prime cuts of butcher's meats without obtrusive sauces, and sausage mild-flavored, without the screaming sage or too much pepper.
Nutmeg is the spice with which our apple pie is most frequently alloyed. An alloy is defined as "anything that reduces purity or excellence." If you put nutmeg into apple pie or sauce, you make it taste always the same, be it made of European or American fruit or of this or that variety of apples. Now, to an epicure the best thing about apple pie or sauce is that when served without spice it retains the peculiar Flavor of the kind of apple it is made from.
To go to your grocer and buy "cooking apples" is almost as bad as to ask for "cooking butter." The best butter and the best apples should always be used in the kitchen—if you can afford to buy them. If you cannot, eat oatmeal and prunes.
To those who have refined palates it makes a world of difference whether their apple pie and sauce are made of "cooking apples" or of Gravensteins, Red Astrachans, Newtown Pippins, or Spitzenbergs. Each variety—and dozens of others might be named—has its own special charm; and the same is true of pies and sauces made of other fruits.
In the baking of pumpkin pie, which, next to that made of apples, is perhaps the most characteristically American pie, mace (which is derived from the covering of the nutmeg seed) or some other spice, is not only permissible but commendable; while mince pie, which we borrowed from the English but eat probably oftener than they do, is such a jumble of condiments—sugar, raisins, currants, almonds, apples, lemon and orange juice and peel, molasses, suet, quince jelly, and other things ad libitum—that it makes little difference what you add in the way of mace, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, or other spices within reason. Time was when caraway seeds, saffron, rosewater, ambergris, and other impossible things were added. As made now, mince pie is as agreeable to most palates as it is indigestible. I am told it can be made so as to be easily digestible, but I "hae ma doots."
Some years ago mince pie was dignified by being made the subject of a political squabble in Washington. Dr. Wiley wanted a definition of "normal mincemeat," and thirty manufacturers were summoned to testify. Evidently some of these manufacturers were making mincemeat without the chopped meat which is an essential ingredient of the best home-made article, for they engaged a trained lexicographer, Prof. C. D. Childs, of the University of Pennsylvania, to prepare a treatise on mince pie, in which it was demonstrated that mincemeat does not necessarily contain meat.
The definition in Murray's Oxford Dictionary is "a mixture made of currants, raisins, sugar, suet, apples, almonds, candied peel, etc., and sometimes meat chopped small; used in mince pies"; which shows that in England, also, meat is not always an ingredient. It is only fair to consumers, however, that the law should compel the manufacturers to print the ingredients in each case on the label. Mince pie with meat is certainly better than mince pie without.
Perhaps I erred in saying that pumpkin pie is, next to apple pie, the most characteristic American pastry dish. It certainly is not more so than cranberry pie.
The cranberry is not exclusively American, like maple syrup, terrapin, and canvasback duck, for it grows in some parts of Europe; but it remained for American epicures to discover its rare gastronomic merits. It took genius to do this, for in its natural wild state the berry is excessively astringent and acid. But it had a Flavor that made an irresistible appeal and invited further cultivation. Particularly agreeable is the Oxycoccus erythrocarpus, a variety which grows in the mountains of Virginia and Georgia. The European berries, though they used to be abundant in England, were neglected because of their inferior Flavor, and England now imports cranberries in large quantities from the United States, as do France, Italy, and Germany, chiefly for tarts.
Cape Cod is now the chief camping ground of the cranberry. It has been doubled in size by cultivation, and its Flavor improved by enriching and draining the soil, and in other ways. The annual production is about three million bushels. Thanks to the growing demand for them, bog lands which were worth $5 an acre now sell at $300 to $700 per acre.
The darker the berry the richer the flavor. Once upon a time I wrote a book on Romantic Love and Personal Beauty in which I tried to prove that brunettes are more beautiful than blondes. I am not sure that I succeeded—there are certainly some ravishing exceptions!—but in the matter of foods there can be no doubt that as a rule the dark are finer than the light colored.
Does not Boston, the center of American culture, give its name to brown bread, and does not Boston prefer dark eggs to the anemic white ones favored in New York? Does any one who has had the good sense to buy "rusty" oranges and grapefruit deny that they are sweeter and more fragrant than the light yellow ones? Ask any epicure if he does not think the second joint of a fowl is more savory than the white meat. Bread which has a deep brown crust is more tasty than pale crumb. Crackers toasted brown are more appetizing than crackers untoasted. English rusks, German zwieback, Italian breadsticks, are they not all brunettes? Do not all vegetables, fruits, and berries darken as they ripen and develop their flavor?
The darkest cranberries therefore are the ones you want to buy. And be sure that your cook in preparing cranberry sauce or jelly presses the pulp through a sieve to remove the indigestible skins. It is only when they are cooked whole and candied with an equal weight of sugar that the skins may be left on them.