A friend asked me recently if I had loved my mother-in-law. Absolutely. I won the mother-in-law sweepstakes with Eleanore. She was kind and thoughtful and loving. She laughed easily. And, as a special added bonus, she was a pie goddess.
This is a claim she would laugh off, but I present it here as fact. Eleanore knew her way around a pie. Case in point: She and Lee brought a pie with them when they came to visit one day. The pie was in a metal pie tin. That is to say, the tin was not transparent. Mere mortals could not see through it.
Nevertheless, Eleanore’s first statement after we oohed and ahhed was, “I’m not happy with the way the bottom crust is browning.” Whereupon she carried the treasure into the kitchen, set it directly on one of the burners of our stove, and turned the burner on.
I was probably still standing there stupefied when, after a minute or two, she announced, “There, that’s better.” The pie, when served, was perfect. Of course. (See earlier statement re P.G. status.)
What’s more, Eleanore passed along the pie-making gene to her daughters. Lee, alas, passed only the pie-eating gene to his son. One Thanksgiving, it was our pleasure to host both my family and my husband’s family, including not just his parents, but one of his sisters and her daughters. Every female member of his family showed up with pies.
That’s pies, plural. Each of them brought a couple different kinds, and they must have coordinated their efforts, because there were no duplications. I’ve never seen that many pies outside of a bakery, and only two bakeries, at that. Those two both had names like Judy’s Famous Pies and occupied storefronts down the street from each other in Linwood, Michigan. (How did we even know about them? See earlier statement re P.E. gene.) They both went out of business during the pandemic. We don’t go to Linwood any more. It’s not the same without the pie bakeries.
We had so many pies that memorable Thanksgiving that it wasn’t even possible to try a sliver of each. There’s only so thin a pie can be sliced. I read in a Louis L’Amour book once that, in the old west, it was considered impolite to cut a pie into more than four servings. Whether or not that bit of pie etiquette was ever true, it’s not true now.
My first clue that Eleanore was a P.G. was that she thought I was joking when I told her I didn’t know how to make pies. She laughed. Such a state of affairs was, for her, unthinkable. The statement was, however, true. I did not come from a pie family. I didn’t even like pie.
My eyes were opened when I first tasted one of Eleanore’s pies: it was wonderful. All previous pies had simply been poor imitations. I decided I should learn to make pie, a notion my sweetheart heartily endorsed. I consulted The Joy of Cooking and made an apple pie. My husband was so pleased that he invited a colleague home for lunch.
I told our guest about the perfection of Eleanore’s pies and apologized for the ordinariness of mine. He ate his less-than-one-quarter of the pie with avowed pleasure, and followed up his visit by sharing with my husband the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for apple pie. This is a solid-gold recipe. And in 2010, Cook’s Illustrated published an updated recipe for crust, which is even better.
You’d think that with all this guidance and encouragement available, even ordinary mortals could produce excellent pie. And they can. Just not consistently.
One day, I called Eleanore in a swivet. “Hello, is this Pie 9-1-1?” I asked when she answered. She laughed, and asked what she could do for me.
“Help me,” I implored.
“What’s the trouble?”
“I’m making an apple pie and only made enough dough for one crust.”
“I believe you’re having Dutch apple pie, today,” she said smoothly, and talked me through the ingredients and proportions for streudel topping. Thanks to Eleanore, that pie was the tastiest baking mistake I’ve ever made.
Thanksgiving is about to roll around again. The menu isn’t set yet, but I’ll make a pie, as usual. It will be the only one on offer. Eleanore and Lee are no more, and the rest of their family now lives far away. Our hearts will be thankful, next Thursday as always, for having had the chance to know and love them all. And for having had the sublime opportunity of partaking of a pie goddess’s pies.
17 November 2023