ISSUE 35, PIES, Part 3: Strawberry
Strawberry Pie
Strawberries inspired a particular fear for dieticians in pre-twentieth century America. These worrywart commentators on food thought dyspepsia was the quick road to the grave, and that consuming uncooked fruits and vegetables were a invitation to gastric inflammation. Of all the berries, strawberries were foremost in the public mind as “needing no cooking.” So thoughts were always conflicted about strawberry pie—even strawberry preserves. Here’s an 1871 southern recipe from the SC upcountry, taken from Theresa C. Brown’s Modern Domestic Cookery:
STRAWBERRY PIE
Take equal proportions of strawberries and raspberries; bake in pie-plates, allowing sufficient sugar to sweeten and water to start with. When done, sprinkle pulverized sugar thickly over the top. Eat with sweetened cream. Some people think manipulation of or application of heat to the strawberry impairs its exquisite flavor. (p 152)
The French chefs and confectioners who had been taking over fine dining in America since the 1850s advanced the idea that cooking strawberries was degradation. Making preserves—saving your fruit harvest by cooking them in sugar—had become a standard practice in the U. S. after sugar became cheap in 1825. And many American fruit pies were sort of fruit preserves in a pie crust. Look at Theresa C. Brown’s recipe. In French confection, strawberries were used as ripe fresh ornaments to cakes and pastries. It is no mistake that one of the American foodways that mystified if not revolted the chefs was the American craving for fruit pies. Their response was to counter the standard sugar strawberry pie with the strawberry custard pie—basically a custard with cut strawberries on top, a crown of merengue that is oven scorched for skinny minute.
The strawberry pie that I first encountered was a mid-20th century pie that first became greatly popular in Texas in the 1950s, the Strawberry Crème Glace Pie. It had a cookie crust whose interior was lined with sliced berries, and into the crust is pour a mixture of vanilla pudding and sour cream, and over it a glossy pour of mashed berries cooked in sugar, cornstarch and water. The Texas home cooks who made this pie a national craze always put red food coloring in the pie to up the red factor. In certain respects this Texas pie tarted up what was sometimes in the South Called the Kentucky Strawberry Pie—it was a mashed strawberries, sugar, water, and cornstarch cooked filling pie with no pudding & cream. You can recognize it as a late 19th century evolution of the sugar fruit pie of the mid 19th century. The glossy shine of the Kentucy pie was one of its glories.
Sometimes—depending on the strawberry variety being used—the pie may taste a shade insipid—or berry berry sweet. I’m sure Brown’s addition of raspberries into the mix was her counter to the problem. My inclination would be to use an Italian strawberry liqueur—fragolini-to up the fragrance and flavor.
I could never muster up the spirit to sample the very retro strawberry jello pie. Perhaps the fear of dyspepsia thwarts me.