French Paste for Raised Pies.
One quart of pastry flour, one table-spoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt, one scant cupful of butter, one egg, one tea-cupful of water. Rub the butter, salt and sugar into the flour. Beat the egg, and add the water to it. Stir this into the flour and butter. Stir this mixture until it is a smooth paste; then put on the board and roll the same as puff paste. This paste must be rolled eight times.
To Make a Pie.
Butter the pie plate (tin is the best), and cover with paste that has been rolled very thin. Roll a strip of paste long enough to go around the plate, and cut in strips an inch wide. Wet the edge of the plate with water, and put a strip of paste on it. Fill with any kind of prepared fruit Have the paste in a roll, and cut enough from the end to cover the pie. Sprinkle the board lightly with flour, and place the paste up-on it. Flour the rolling pin with, the hand. Roll from you and to one side until the paste is the right size. It must be much larger than the plate. In the centre cut a slit about halt an inch long. Cover the pie, having the paste "fulled" on, as it shrinks in the baking. The oven must be hot at first, and after the first fifteen minutes the drafts must be closed. A mince pie will require one hour to bake, and an apple pie fifty minutes. Peach, and nearly all other fruit pies, require the same time.
Mince Pie Meat.
Boil a beef tongue, weighing six pounds, and six pounds of the vein of a round of beef (these should just simmer). After skinning the tongue, chop it and the beef very fine, and add five pounds of beef suet, chopped fine; five pounds of stoned raisins, three of dried currants, one and a half of citron, cut fine; nine of sugar, one and a half pints of molasses, two quarts of the liquor in which the meat was boiled, one quart of brandy, one pint of white wine, a cupful of salt, half a cupful of cinnamon, one-fourth of a cupful of cloves, one-fourth of a cupful of allspice, three nutmegs, a table-spoonful of mace. Put all in a large pan, and let stand over night. Put what you wish to bake in another pan with half as much stewed and sweetened apple as you have meat, and let it stand one hour. Put the remainder of the meat in a jar. Cover with a paper dipped in brandy, and then cover tightly, to exclude the air. Set in a cool place for future use, [Mrs. M. L. W.]
Squash pies.
Five pints of stewed and strained squash, two quarts of boiling milk, one and a half nutmegs, four teaspoonfuls of salt, five cupfuls of sugar, nine eggs, four table-spoonfuls of Sicily Madeira and two of rose-water. Gradually pour the boiling milk on the squash, and stir continually. Add the nutmeg, rose-water and sugar. When cold, add the eggs, well beaten; and just before the mixture is put in the plates, add the Madeira. Butter deep plates, and line with a plain paste. Fill with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven for forty minutes. [Mrs. M. L. W.]
Sweet Potato Pies.
When the potatoes are dry and mealy, take a quart after they have been pared, boiled and mashed, a quart of milk, four eggs, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar to taste. Bake the same as squash pies. If the potatoes are very moist, use less milk.