Welcome Friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to Sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're
going to do a mock apple pie a couple of
weeks ago we did a vinegar pie and we
sort of traced its history from the
mid-1850s uh down Through the Ages and
through the Great Depression and it's
one of those pies vinegar pies one of
those pies that when you say it people
say oh yeah it was invented during the
Great Depression
when you say mock apple pie
um you get that oh it's from the Great
Depression it was invented during the
Great Depression by Ritz crackers it
predates those again mock apple pie goes
back into the 1850s and so today we're
going to do a recipe from 1857.
um February 1857 it's from a newspaper
in Indiana and it's attributed to a
quaker so we're going to start out I've
got dry bread crumbs and this is water
that's just boiled
I'm gonna do half of the recipe
because I don't need two pies I only
need one pie
so in these early recipes
um what we found with the vinegar pie
was that it had an Appley flavor and I
think the apple cider vinegar was
bringing that Appley flavor
this one doesn't have any vinegar or
apple cider vinegar but it has tartaric
acid so next in goes some white sugar
this is cane sugar it is
um pure pure sucrose so that gets mixed
in and then it calls for some butter so
a little bit of butter gets mixed in and
that butter should melt along with the
hot water
okay the Putter's melting in nicely now
um
one of the things that I see over and
over and over again in the newspaper
recipes through the 1800s early 1900s is
it says to make this recipe when apples
are scarce
and
you know living in 2023 apples available
all the time
because they're you know we're in the
north they're either coming in from the
north here during Harvest Time
or they're varieties that can be held
almost forever in the correct storage so
you know an apple that was picked here
in the fall
we could still have that apple fresh and
tasting fresh next fall when the new
crop is coming in or there's apples
coming in from South America South
Africa that sort of thing
in 1850 is not quite the same they
didn't always have some place to to hold
apples or keep apples long-term storage
especially if you're you know just
moving into the West which is where a
lot of these recipes seem to come from
the sort of the Midwest Northern Midwest
um you might not have had the storage
facilities you might not have been able
to plant an apple tree yet you may not
have access to Apples all year round and
when I look at our recipe cookbook
collection
this is the cook not mad published in
1831 in Watertown New York and I I just
went in
picked one from the early 1800s off the
shelf pulled it off and of course in
this recipe book just like I'm sure
there are in most of the other ones from
this time period there is an apple pie
using dried apples so where we would
keep apples today in cold storage and
I'm sure they did in this time period as
well you know in a root cellar or
whatever
they would have also been using dried
apples and so that's where this comes in
you may not have been able to get a
dried Apple you may not have been able
to get a fresh Apple so you're going to
get the next best thing
um
next in is tartaric acid
when you get into the 1930s with this
recipe you see cream of tartar and cream
of tartar is a derivative of tartaric
acid tartaric acid is uh is the first
product and it was originally
produced or a byproduct of the wine
industry
um
it's often described as uh wine diamonds
it precipitates out of the wine when
it's in storage in a barrel
and as you get later and later and later
they move away from tartaric Acid I get
this at the grocery store very easy to
come by today at the grocery store even
they moved to cream of tartar which is
again a little bit easier to get
and by the time you reach the 1870s you
start to see lemons in the recipe which
kind of blows my mind because
if you can't get apples how are you
getting lemons and lemons are something
that carries on into the Great
Depression next it asks for nutmeg
and so I needed a fresh nutmeg today
what I have here is a whole nutmeg that
still has the arrow on the outside and
what I mean by the arrow is this uh Lacy
covering on the outside that arrow is
when you get take it off and grind it
that is called mace
and so I've pulled off the mace and I'll
leave that aside what I'm left with is
this nut
and inside this nut
is the actual nutmeg
so just put that on the counter and
we'll
give it a whack
shell breaks off
and inside is the actual nutmeg and I
need to grate in half of this nutmeg
this recipe follows a very similar
trajectory to the vinegar pie in every
respect
as the pie moves forward it becomes more
and more complicated more things are
added extra spices are added
um
it moves from leftover stale bread to
crackers like saltine crackers
then to Ritz crackers and so Ritz comes
on the scene and I you know just a pure
marketing move
they figure out that they can push their
crackers to make this pie and they put
the recipe on all of their boxes
okay this
this seems pretty good so this is
supposed to cool down
and then the next thing we put in is a
well-beaten egg
so
crack the egg
give it a little bit of a beating
and then
mix it in to the rest
and so I've already got the bottom crust
rolled out we'll roll out the top crust
now this is a two crust pie
all right so we'll get a little bit of
flour out here on our bench
got our pie dough this is an all lard
pie dough you'll find the recipe
Elsewhere on our Channel
and we'll just roll this out so by the
time we get to the 1930s 1934 so you're
we're in the Great Depression at that
point
um
it's it's very interesting because I
can't I can't reconcile some of today's
popular storytelling around this pie and
the Great Depression
I can't reconcile it with what I
actually saw or see in the newspapers
when I researched these recipes
and so in 1934 our an article comes up
it's sort of a viral article it's there
are variations of the article in
multiple uh newspapers across the United
States
written by a very famous at the time
restaurateur who is doing a history
of food and cooking over the previous 75
years at that point for um
a p markets
and he talks specifically about how
horrible mock apple pie from the 1850s
so he targets it right in he's a food
historian in this time period as well he
targets right in and says that this pie
is from the 1850s
and that you know it's a horrible pie
that needs to stay in the 1850s people
need to forget about it it's not
something that anybody would want to eat
or should eat okay that is big enough so
I'll just kind of
scoot that to the side a little bit
we'll bring our bottom crust in
we will pour in our filling
that is really sloppy
and round about Center I'm going to cut
a vent hole in the top because it's
going to need a vent hole definitely
set that aside I've got a little bit of
water here and so I'll just go around
the edge
wet down the pie dough so that the top
sticks
I could have done a lattice top
uh for some reason I thought I'd do a
full top I really like pie crust I love
baked pie crust and so to that end with
the with the off cuts
of what's left over today
um
I will be making patisser in an upcoming
video with the off cuts from today's pie
dough so uh keep an eye out for that one
so it's really simple at this point I
will just go around with a fork
and seal the edge
and then I'll come back around with a
knife
and I'll clean up
cut off any of the excess and we'll use
that in our pet to Sir now I've got the
oven preheated to 450 degrees I've got a
pizza stone on the bottom and I've put
in a baking tray in case it bubbles over
you never know I'm going to cook it at a
really high temperature at the start to
uh to get a nice bottom crust I don't
want a Soggy Bottom on this pie so I've
got it in a pie tin rather than a pie
plate or one of those glass pie dishes
I find the combination of the metal
bottom on a pizza stone high heat I get
a really good bottom crust off the top
15 minutes I'll turn it down to about
350 and we'll bake it until it's done
Jewels hey Glenn you're concentrating
pretty hard there hey friends
oh well it didn't thicken
thicken no it looks a bit soupy it does
um but the crust is great though even so
[Music]
well it's it's a strange texture yeah
oh good snap on the bottom crust I like
a good bottom crust
okay so it's
I want to say it's Apple yeah but
the Apple texture isn't quite it's like
it's like the mushiest apple pie ever
so it's
it's breadcrumbs
mushy well where's the Apple flavor come
from
um
the tartaric acid I should have known in
the way it didn't even look right you
just wander on in so the tartaric acid
is bringing that Apple flavor
interesting just on its own and is that
just the sweet and combination of the
sweet in that
you're just tasting it
yeah nice craft this one Chris just take
one Crystal I might take one Crystal
a little something stuck in my foot
almost tastes a little lemony
yeah and so later later pies later
recipes for mock apple pie use lemon
juice and lemon rind
um that's actually pretty good if that
was thicker if if the filling was
thicker that would really work
so you make it
I don't know I would
two eggs instead of one it only had one
egg and that one egg was supposed to
thicken enough filling for two pies
so this leads me to a discussion about
turnip yes as a filler the McDonald's
well and the fact that it takes on any
flavor so if you had if you had uh
cooked some turnip and put in cubes and
put that in there beforehand yes would
it have given more texture to this yes
in lieu of bread the turnip or with
bread no the turnip would work
definitely you could you so you could I
really know I've never done it I just
know that turnip is a common filler for
a lot of things because it takes on the
flavor of everything so I'm gonna I'm
gonna I had already been thinking about
this okay and I'm gonna I'm gonna do it
I'm gonna actually eat more though I I
am actually going to make a mock apple
pie with the turnip because turnip you
would turn up again you probably may
have it it may hang around a little bit
longer
um and it's inexpensive and I think the
texture would be much closer to an Apple
than
what's what's going on here
it's a pretty good pie though so I mean
I'm having another bite I'm trying
really hard not to just sew and snap all
the crust and eat it I I put it up on on
screen this guy George Rector okay um
he's a restaurant tour in the late 1800s
early 1900s pretty famous chef at the
time he does a series of articles for
um a p stores okay for their 75th
Anniversary or whatever
and he talks about this pie being
invented in the 1850s and that it should
be left in the 1850s it should be
forgotten about that it's no good
I think it's actually pretty good it's
not bad I mean it's not an apple
pie no and I would I would I would
it is better than some of the other pies
from this era yes I would cut back on
the nutmeg and add cinnamon because I
more closely associate cinnamon to apple
pie than nutmeg
there you go so that's part of that that
that myth of the flavor is getting the
right spices that that suit you okay so
um mock apple pie from the 1850s
uh we will revisit this with turnip
okay stopping by see you again soon