Pie Crust

Thanksgiving and the New England Pie:
Pie Crust

No matter the filling, all pies share one characteristic : crust, also known as paste, pastry, dough, shell (for an undercrust) or lid (for a top crust).

The most basic form of pie crust is made of flour and shortening. The ingredients are combined and the crust then rolled or molded into the desired shape. The edges are often decoratively "crimped."

Pie pastry is notoriously difficult to make. In her 1890 Boston Cook Book, Mrs. Lincoln prefaced four pages of directions with these words of warning :

"It requires practice to make puff paste well, and there are so many other dishes more easily made and vastly more important, it is better not to waste time and strength upon it. Let your ambition as a housekeeper soar higher than perfection in making puff paste. But those who will have it may observe the following directions."

For centuries, shortening was animal fat : lard, butter, suet and meat drippings (in descending order of use).

Lard is hog’s fat, obtained by boiling or rendering. Pure lard is white and free of disagreeable taste or smell. Lard has been commercially available, packed in distinctive buckets, since the mid-1800s. Many recipes still call for lard for the flakiest pie crusts.

Health reformers of the 1880s sought lard substitutes. A large lard producer, the Fairbanks Company, was among the first successful innovators. "Cottolene" was 90% cottonseed oil and 10% beef tallow. Opaque, solid and white, it was packed in buckets like lard. Cottolene was heavily advertised, appealing to the public’s fascination with "genteel" and labor-saving convenience foods.

Once Cottolene broke the "lard barrier," the stage was set for the introduction and immediate popularity of Criso, an opaque, solid, white, all-vegetable shortening introduced by Proctor & Gamble in 1911.

"Can any one tell who first imprisoned our luscious fruits in a paste of grease and flour, baptized the thing with fire, and named it pie? And why is this pie a necessity? That is what confounds me…

Alas for the poor woman chained to the rolling-pin! Her sentence is for life."

The Schoolmaster’s Trunk by Abby Morton Diaz, 1875.

Click HERE for an 1859 pie crust recipe.

Click HERE for a 1913 recipe for apple pie from the newly-introduced Crisco.