Pies—Apple, Peach, and Berry.—In the first place, don’t make them except very semi-occasionally. Pastry, even when good, is so indigestible that children should never have it, and their elders but seldom. A nice short-cake, filled with stewed fruit, or with fresh berries, mashed and sweetened, is quite as agreeable to eat and far more wholesome. But, as people will both make and eat pie-crust, the best rules known are given. Butter, being more wholesome than lard, should always be used if it can be afforded. A mixture of lard and butter is next best. For a plain pie-crust, take: One quart of flour, one even teacup of lard and one of butter, one teacup of ice water or very cold water, and a teaspoonful of salt. Rub the lard and salt into the flour till it is dry and crumbly, add the ice water and work to a smooth dough. Wash the butter and have it cold and firm as possible, divide it in three parts. Roll out the paste and dot it all over with bits from one part of the butter, sprinkle with flour and roll up. Roll out and repeat until the butter is gone. If the crust can now stand on the ice for half an hour it will be nicer and more flaky. This amount will make three good-sized pies. Enough for the bottom crusts can be taken off after one rolling in of butter, thus making the top crust richer. Lard alone will make a tender, but not a flaky, paste.
For puff paste there is required one pound of flour, three quarters of a pound of butter, one teacupful of ice water, one teaspoonful of salt, one of sugar, and yolk of one egg. Wash the butter, divide into three parts, reserving a bit the size of an egg, and put it on the ice for an hour. Rub the bit of butter, the salt, and sugar, into the flour, and stir in the ice water and egg beaten together. Make into a dough and knead on the moulding-board till glossy and firm—at least ten minutes will be required. Roll out into a sheet ten or twelve inches square. Cut a cake of the ice-cold butter in thin slices, or flatten it very thin with the rolling-pin. Lay it on the paste, sprinkle with flour, and fold over the edges. Press it in somewhat with the rolling-pin and roll out again. Always roll from you. Do this again and again until the butter is all used, rolling up the paste after the last cake is in, and then putting it on the ice for an hour or more. Have filling all ready, and let the paste be as nearly ice-cold as possible when it goes into the oven. There are much more elaborate rules, but this insures handsome paste. Make a plainer one for the bottom crusts. Cover puff paste with a damp cloth and it may be kept on the ice a day or two before baking.
Apple Pie.—Line a pie-plate with plain paste. Pare sour apples—greenings are best—quarter and cut in thin slices. Allow one cup of sugar, and quarter of a grated nutmeg mixed with it. Fill the pie-plate heaping full of the sliced apple, sprinkling the sugar between the layers. It will require not less than six good-sized apples. Wet the edges of the pie with cold water, lay on the cover and press down securely, that no juice may escape. Bake three-quarters of an hour, or a little less if the apples are very tender. No pie in which the apples are stewed beforehand can compare with this in flavor. If they are used stew till tender and strain. Sweeten and flavor to taste. Fill the pies and bake half an hour.
Berry Pies.—Have a very deep plate, and either no under crust, save a rim, or a very thin one. Allow a cup of sugar to a quart of fruit, but no spices. Prick the upper crust half a dozen times with a fork, to let out the steam.—Helen Campbell, in “The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking.”
Apple Méringue Pies.—Stew and sweeten ripe, juicy apples, when you have pared and sliced them. Mash smooth and season with nutmeg. If you like the flavor, stew some lemon peel with the apple, and remove when cold. Fill your crust and bake until just done. Spread over the apple a thick méringue,[1] made by whipping to a stiff froth the whites of three eggs for each pie, sweetening with a tablespoonful of powdered sugar for each egg. Flavor this with rose-water or vanilla; beat until it will stand alone, and cover the pie three-quarters of an inch thick. Set back in the oven until the méringue is well “set.” Should it color too darkly, sift powdered sugar over it when cold. Eat cold. Peach pies are even more delicious made in this manner.
Apple Snow requires six apples, whites of two eggs and three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Peel and grate the apples into the whites, which must have been whipped to a stiff froth. Beat in the sugar with a few light sweeps of the egg; whip and set in a cold place until wanted. Eat with crackers or cake.—Marion Harland.
Apple Fritters.—Pare some fine apples, and with an apple-corer cut out the core from the center of each; now cut them across in slices, about one-third of an inch thick, having the round opening in the center, dip these in a fritter batter and fry in boiling lard; sprinkle over sugar. Fresh or canned peaches may be used in the same way.—Mrs. Henderson, in “Practical Cooking.”
Putting Up Fruit.—One of the most satisfactory operations which is carried on in the household is the annual putting up of fruit. To be sure, it has its disadvantages, like everything else. The fruit generally gets ripe a week or two earlier than you expect it will, and is brought to you on a day for which you have planned other work; but, after all, there is to the well-regulated mind a rare pleasure in being confronted with a basket of luscious fruit which may be preserved for enjoyment in the winter; and I maintain that the pleasure we receive in midwinter from a dish of peaches, cherries, or plums on the table is not wholly of the senses, but the mind itself enjoys the contrasting picture which inevitably comes before it. Something of the brightness of the long summer days in which it grew and ripened is felt again, and just as chopped pickle in June will suggest a November day when the tomatoes no longer ripen, the cucumbers have gone to seed, and the frost has covered the tangled vines in the garden with a fairy-like network, so red raspberries and pears in December and March minister to other wants than those of the palate. Half the trouble of putting up fruit—the broken cans, the scalded fingers and stained dresses—might be done away with if a woman could enter upon the work in the right spirit. If, instead of complaining in May because the trees are full of blossoms, and exhausting ourselves mentally by putting up the fruit and having it spoil long before it is ripe, we were to refrain from asking if we shall live to eat it or to see it eaten, we should accomplish something really great in preserving our peace of mind as well as our fruit. It is a simple matter also, if entered into with calm cheerfulness, to look over and can the fruit. After the fruit has been carefully examined, set it in a cool room or into the refrigerator, while you examine your cans. It is well to have some new rubber rings on hand, as you may need them; have also a cup of flour paste ready; then if the zinc rings or covers are bent a little, you may still make them air-tight with the paste. If you are at all doubtful about the condition of your cans, use the paste. In a long experience of putting up fruit I have never broken but one can, and that was on account of carelessness in rinsing it in too hot water. I rinse the can in warm water, then set it in a two-quart basin with a little water in it, set it on the stove beside my porcelain kettle, fill the can with boiling fruit, and seal up as quickly as may be. One thing which should be carefully avoided is too much boiling of the fruit after the sugar is put with it. The injury which boiling does is not by any means well understood by many good cooks. Last year I gave up all the care of putting up fruit and pickles to a competent and honest girl; but, by her not knowing that sugar, when boiled, actually changes its nature, and loses much of its sweetness, she used more than twice the quantity which I have used this year, and then the fruit was not so sweet as it ought to be. (When making syrup to eat on hot cakes bear this in mind: after the sugar is dissolved let it come to a boil, but do not boil it.)
Peaches.—If possible, pare and cut up your peaches the afternoon before they are to be canned, and scatter sugar over them. In the morning there will be syrup enough to cook them in. Put this syrup into your porcelain kettle—if you have one, if not, into a bright tin pan; cook a few peaches at a time, try them with a broom-splint; just before they are done add the necessary quantity of sugar. Some housekeepers make a practice of putting one whole peach into a can, to give the almond flavor of the stone to the whole can. You can not, of course, guess at just the number of halves or quarters needed to fill the can; if you have too many pieces, and are afraid of their cooking too much, take them out carefully on a plate and, after cooking others for the next canful, add to them. By cooking a few at a time you can preserve the shape and have much finer results than if you cook a great many at a time.
Quinces and Sweet Apples.—Prepare the quinces and apples as for canning. Steam them in the same way, having about one-third as many quinces as apples. Make a very sweet syrup, as they will keep better with plenty of sugar. These may be canned or kept in a large stone jar.—Emma Whitcomb Babcock, in “Household Hints.”