Thesis Book Layout - FINAL - Flipbook - Page 6
“CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE?”
Cherries are ripening, the red pie cherries
which have color and tang and personality.
Now is the time to make cherry jam and
cherry pie, if you really know how. Cherry
jam happens to be one of the best of all
confections, but because it requires a cook
who is also a connoisseur not a great many
people undertake it. No such good fortune
prevails with cherry pie. The notion seems
to be abroad that anyone with a pie pan and
a bowl of cherries can make a cherry pie;
and nothing could be further from the truth.
It takes an artist to make a cherry pie
worth the name. A person able, willing
and patient enough to pit the cherries, and
discriminating enough to choose the right
cherries, dead-ripe for the most part but with
just the right number still tanged with acid.
Pitted and oozing their own undiluted juice,
they should have just the right amount of
sugar, not too much or too little. Then a dash,
the most careful dash, of nutmeg. Then a bit
of flour. Not corn-starch, but honest flour;
too much flour and the pie will congeal, too
little and it will flow, either of which is
fatal.
There are the ingredients. Build a bottom
crust which will flake in your mouth; and, as
you will, make a full top crust or a lattice.
Dab the cherries with butter before they go
in, dab crust or lattice with butter, sprinkle
judiciously with sugar, and bake.
It sounds so simple. And it is simple,
when the right person does it. The result,
depending on the maker, can be magnificent,
or dismal. As we said, it is essentially a
matter of art. And, unfortunately, there are
too few artists around when cherries ripen.