Take fine juicy acid apples; pare, core, and cut them into small
pieces. Have ready a deep dish that has been lined with paste.
Fill it with the apples; strewing among them layers of brown
sugar, and adding the rind of a lemon pared thin, and also the
juice squeezed in, or some essence of lemon. Put on another sheet
of paste as a lid; close the edges well, and notch them. Bake the
pie in a moderate oven, about three quarters of an hour. Eat it
with cream and sugar, or with cold boiled custard.
If the pie is made of early green apples, they should first be
stewed with a very little water and plenty of brown sugar.
What are called sweet apples are entirely unfit for cooking, as
they become tough and tasteless; and it is almost impossible to
get them sufficiently done.
When you put stewed apples into baked shells, grate nutmeg over
the top. You may cover them with cream whipped to a stiff froth,
and heaped on them.
Cranberries and gooseberries should be stewed with sugar before
they are put into paste. Peaches should be cut in half or
quartered, and the stones taken out. The stones of cherries and
plums should also be extracted.
Raspberries or strawberries, mixed with cream and white sugar, may
he put raw into baked shells.