Apple Pie Times

IT’S NO WONDER that we have felt apple-pie deprived this fall. Consider:

FORTUNATELY, Joanne DiNardo and Nina Scott came to the rescue.

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Joanne is president of The Friends of Sholan Farms, a nonprofit organization that manages a 169-acre orchard owned by the city of Leominster, Massachusetts, where John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was born.

In a recent email, Joanne wrote that she was “just creating my grandmother’s famous Baldwin apple pie.” That piqued our interest! She was kind enough to send us the recipe, and photographs of the finished product.

She begins by making one 9-inch double crust. “I make my own butter crust,” Joanne writes. “My grandmother used lard, and I still prefer it over butter. But butter is delicious, too.”

She makes the crust the day before and refrigerates it overnight. She does the same with the apples, peeling them, sprinkling with lemon juice and storing them in a gallon plastic bag. 

Joanne uses “mostly Baldwin and at least two other types” of apples in her pies. “This time I added an Albemarle Pippin, Red Rome (Rome Beauty), and Mutsu (Crispin) for additional flavor and texture.”  

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Nina Scott, 83, of Amherst, Massachusetts, wrote after Russell Steven Powell’s recent Zoom presentation to the Amherst Historical Society that “it spurred me on” to Atkins Farms to buy several apple varieties she had never tried before: Gala, Jonagold, and Pink Lady.

She then mentioned the “best tasting pie ever!” She found it in Great Dishes of the World, a 1963 cookbook by Robert Carrier (1923-2006), an American chef who spent much of his life in England.

The pie is unusual in that it includes both lemon and orange zest. As Nina put it, the citrus “makes the pie taste as though you had added Cointreau,” the orange-flavored liqueur. 

She won a blue ribbon for her English Apple Pie at the Northampton, Massachusetts, Three County Fair apple pie contest “years ago,” she says, in the ‘fancy apple pie’ category. 

For apples, Nina says McIntosh are a good choice, “as they cook down well.” She prefers using golden raisins because “they plump up beautifully in the various juices while the pie bakes.

“I’m getting hungry just writing it down!”

We used three McIntosh and one each of New England heirlooms Baldwin, Northern Spy, and Rhode Island Greening, plus an old French apple, Calville Blanc d’Hiver. We made a few minor changes for ease of preparation. The pie was delicious!

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WITH THANKSGIVING approaching, if you haven’t made a pie or need a refresher, watch this excellent three-part video featuring Andrea Darrow of Green Mountain Orchards, Putney, Vermont: