J. Williams’ (?) 1767 Recipe for ‘Cherry Pye’

“Make a good crust, lay a little round the sides of your dish, throw sugar at the bottom, and lay in your fruit and sugar at the top. A few red currants does well with them ; put on your lid, and bake in a slack oven.

Make a plumb pye the same way, and a gooseberry pye. If you would have it red, let it stand a good while in the oven, after the bread is drawn. A custard is very good with the gooseberry pye.”

(Printed for J. Williams) Primitive Cookery or the Kitchen Garden Display’d (1767)

A good Cherry Pie is a wonderful thing – just ask Agent Cooper¹Rest in Peace, Mr Lynch. – and has quite likely been a wonderful thing ever since someone picked a batch of cherries and wondered to themselves whether they’d be good in a pie.²Dumb question. Of course they would be good in a pie. Stop asking questions and just get on with baking the damn pie.

Admittedly, the ‘Cherry Pye’ recipe above isn’t so much a recipe as the general outline of a method for making a cherry, plum, gooseberry or, presumably, any other fruit pie. As is often the case with eighteenth century recipes, the key details – weights and measures, cooking times – are assumed to be already known, or at least easily inferred.

The instruction to make a “good crust” suggests that the pastry was intended to be eaten along with the filling, and the filling itself is just fruit and sugar; as much as can fit in the pie case of the former, and the latter to taste. The addition of a few redcurrants sounds like a nice touch, to add a bit of sharpness. On with the pastry lid, and into a “slack”, or cooling³Hat-tip to Angela A. Johnson’s extremely helpful glossary of old cookery terms. oven, until the pye is done.

As for the opinion that “custard is very good with the gooseberry pye”, well, I don’t think there are many counter-arguments to that one, except to extend the sentiment to pretty much any fruit pie. Or you could just add a full-stop after “good”.

Incidentally, the question-mark against J. Williams’ name in the title of this post is because this collection of recipes is most likely made up of other writers’ work. This was very common practice indeed in Williams’ day. As I’ve mentioned before, even after the introduction of state-enforced copyright via the Statute of Anne in 1710, recipes were specifically excluded from the types of works that could be protected. So printers were at liberty to produce their own volumes of assorted writers’ recipes, or methods, without giving credit where credit was due. Not that I approve, but that’s the way it was.

How about you? Do you have a more usefully explanatory recipe for a great cherry pie, or one that’s a go-to for all your fruit pie baking sessions? Do please let me know, via the comments.

Footnotes

• 1
  Rest in Peace, Mr Lynch. ↩︎
• 2
  Dumb question. Of course they would be good in a pie. Stop asking questions and just get on with baking the damn pie. ↩︎
• 3
  Hat-tip to Angela A. Johnson’s extremely helpful glossary of old cookery terms. ↩︎