Thanksgiving Pie No. 3

It is the turn of cranberry pie today, in our Thanksgiving series. The cranberry is of course a major crop in the USA, and like the pumpkin, was used to advantage by the Native American Indians who shared their knowledge with the hungry, struggling early settlers, thereby assuring its place at the heart of Thanksgiving.

According to a gardeners’s manual of 1839, one cranberry plant requires two and a half square feet of land and will produce three and a half bushels of berries which will supply one hundred and forty pies. Even if modern horticultural methods have not increased the yield, that is an extraordinarily generous pie plant.

Living as I do in the nether part of the world, where fresh cranberries are as common as hen’s teeth and almost as expensive as fresh caviar, I am thoroughly entitled to be curious about cranberry pie. Most recipes give a cup for cup amount of sugar to berries. This is a jam proportion, is it not?  Is the filling of the finished pie/tart jammy (or it that jelly-y?)  I know that one year I will make it over the big water in time for Thanksgiving, and perhaps one of you will make me the real deal. I look forward to it.

In the meanwhile, only a gratuitious satisfaction of my curiosity is possible. It appears that cookbook writers over the years disagree as to whether the quintessential cranberry pie should be spiced or not, and the berries pre-cooked or not. There does seem to be consensus that cranberry pies are topless. In many parts of the world, a topless pie is a tart … but let me not start that debate again …

The extraordinarily versatile and prolific Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) who must be considered an expert, comes out clearly in favour of topless cranberry pies. In her famous book The American Frugal Housewife (1841) says of them:

“Cranberry pies need very little spice. A little nutmeg, or cinnamon, improves them. They need a great deal of sweetening. It is well to stew the sweetening with them ; at least a part of it. It is easy to add, if you find them too sour for your taste. When cranberries are strained, and added to about their own weight in sugar, they make very delicious tarts. No upper crust.”

I have chosen a recipe for you today from an Iowa newspaper, the Waterloo Courier, of Nov 24, 1880.

Cranberry Pie.

There are various ways to make a cranberry pie; some make it open like a custard or pumpkin pie. This is good, but not so good as to cover like an apple pie. Do not stew the berries, as some do before baking, but slit each berry with a knife. This will preserve the freshness of the fruit, which is quite an important thing. A cupful of berries aud an equal quantity of white sugar will make a medium-sized pie. .Those who like a sweet pie should have more sugar, also more berries if desired. 
Bake as usual. A little flour sifted over the fruit gives it a thicker consistence.
One thing should not be forgotten, add a small teacupful of water.

Do you, Oh Fresh Cranberry Pie Makers, really slit each and every berry individually before en-pastrying them? A great labour of love, that.

The cranberry is also, as I understand it, indispensible in the form of sauce for the turkey at Thanksgiving – no doubt an adaptation of the ancient indispensible currant sauce for various meats from the English tradition. I can buy it in a jar here in Oz, but it looks like breakfast jam. Maybe I will mortgage the house and buy some fresh berries to make it this year for our Christmas turkey. Please send me your best recipe for cranberry sauce from scratch.

Quotation for the Day …

It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.

Alistair Cooke.