All pies are best the day they are baked. If kept twenty-four hours the paste falls and becomes comparatively hard, heavy, and unwholesome. If the fruit is not ripe, it should be stewed, sweetened, and allowed to get cold before it is put into the pie. If put in warm it will make the paste heavy. With fruit pies always have a sugar dish on the table in case they should not be found sweet enough.
STANDING PIES.—
Cut up half a pound of butter, and put it into a sauce-pan with three quarters of a pint of water; cover it, and set it on hot coals. Have ready in a pan two pounds of sifted flour; make a hole in the middle of it, pour in the melted butter as soon as it boils, and then with a spoon gradually mix in the flour. When it is well mixed, knead it with your hands into a stiff dough. Sprinkle your paste-board with flour, lay the dough upon it, and continue to knead it with your hands till it no longer sticks to them, and is quite light. Then let it stand an hour to cool. Cut off pieces for the bottom and top; roll them out thick, and roll out a long piece for the sides or walls of the pie, which you must fix on the bottom so as to stand up all round; cement them together with white of egg, pinching and closing them firmly. Then put in the ingredients of your pie, (which should be venison, game, or poultry,) and lay on the lid or top crust, pinching the edges closely together. You may ornament the sides and top with leaves or flowers of paste, shaped with a tin cutter, and notch or scollop the edges handsomely. Before you set it in the oven glaze it all over with white of egg. Bake it four hours. These pies are always eaten cold, and in winter will keep two or three weeks, if the air is carefully excluded from them; and they may be carried to a considerable distance.
A PYRAMID OF TARTS.—
Roll out a sufficient quantity of the best puff paste, or sugar paste; and with oval or circular cutters, cut it out into seven or eight pieces of different sizes; stamping the middle of each with the cutter you intend using for the next. Bake them all separately, and when they are cool, place them on a dish in a pyramid, (gradually diminishing in size,) the largest piece at the bottom, and the smallest at the top. Take various preserved fruits, and lay some of the largest on the lower piece of paste; on the next place fruit that is rather smaller; and so on till you finish at the top with the smallest sweetmeats you have. The upper one may be not so large as a half-dollar, containing only a single raspberry or strawberry.
Notch all the edges handsomely. You may ornament the top or pinnacle of the pyramid with a sprig of orange blossom or myrtle.
APPLE AND OTHER PIES.
Take fine juicy acid apples; pare, core, and cut them into small pieces. Have ready a deep dish that has been lined with paste. Fill it with the apples; strewing among them layers of brown sugar, and adding the rind of a lemon pared thin, and also the juice squeezed in, or some essence of lemon. Put on another sheet of paste as a lid; close the edges well, and notch them. Bake the pie in a moderate oven, about three quarters of an hour. Eat it with cream and sugar, or with cold boiled custard.
If the pie is made of early green apples, they should first be stewed with a very little water, and then plenty of sugar stirred in while they are hot.