Cookbook Friday: Fried Apple Pies

Pearl [Price] Shepherd circa 1900 in Price’s Fork, Virginia.

Remember that little girl in last week’s post?  Here she is all grown up.  Ain’t she purty?

In 1899, Pearl Price married Zack Shepherd, who we’ll meet next week, and they had three daughters: Willie Mae, Ethel (my great grandmother), and Claribel.  They lived on a small, half-acre farm between Price and Brush Mountains in Virginia.  The land was quite fertile and they grew potatoes, corn, beans, cabbage, beets, turnips, and sweet potatoes, among other things.  They also had a cow, some pigs, and a small orchard of fruit trees. 

As I mentioned before, a lot of my great grandmother’s early recipes aren’t too terribly detailed, including this one:

“My mother [Pearl] used dried sour apples to make fried pies.  She cooked the apples, mashed them, and added spice, cloves, and sugar.  Next, she took a ball of biscuit dough and rolled it out round.  She spread the apple mixture on one half, and folded the other half over it.  Then, she fried it to a golden brown.  Boy, were they good!”

For most of these sorts of recipes, I’m leaving you to your own devices because that's just the kind of friend I am.  Plus, these excerpts are really more about preserving the history than actually replicating the dish.  But in this particular case, since I’ve made these fritters a bunch of times and I love them, it’s really the least I can do to share what I did (which I never wrote down so I had to make them again this week, hence my tardiness with the recipe).   But don’t get used to it.  I plan to revert back to my usual lazy self next week.

 

Fried Apple Pies

Instead of dried apples, I used fresh tart apples for the filling.  The biscuit dough is an adaptation of my Great Aunt Claribel's recipe.

Filling
3 tart apples, like Granny Smiths or McIntoshes or both
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp. cinnamon
Pinch cloves

Biscuit Dough
2 cups flour
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. shortening or lard
¾ cup buttermilk (and, perhaps, a tablespoon or two more)
Oil, shortening, or lard for frying

Peel, core, and dice apples.  In a small bowl, mix together sugar and spices.  Set aside 1 teaspoon of sugar mixture to sprinkle on finished fritters.  Add the apples and remaining sugar mixture to a small pot.  Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the apples start to release their juices.  Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook until softened, stirring occasionally, about 10-12 minutes (you may need to add a bit of water during the cooking process if it gets too dry).  Let cool.

In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Rub shortening into dry ingredients with your hands until pieces are smaller than pea-sized.  Add buttermilk and fluff with a fork to combine.  If dough is too dry to hold together, add a bit more buttermilk.  Bring dough together with hands and knead a few times until cohesive.  Break off pieces about golf-ball-sized and roll out into circles with a rolling pin.  Place apple filling in the middle of the dough circle (a bit off-center), then fold over one side and seal, pressing edges together with your fingers and crimping with a fork. 

Heat oil, shortening, or lard until hot (375°F if you want to get technical about it).  Fry until golden brown on each side and drain on paper towels.  Sprinkle with reserved spiced sugar immediately, and eat as hot as you can manage.

Makes at least 1 dozen.

Pearl [Price] Shepherd
Price’s Fork, Virginia
1879 – 196?

*Real Southerners, feel free to correct my biscuit technique.  There’s no substitute for experience.

Next Recipe: Virginia Cured Ham

     (Previously: Intro to Appalachia)

Comments

[aforkfulofspaghetti]

Mmmm. They sound really good. And I note the use of ice cream, too... ;) Thanks to your Great Aunt Claribel for the inspiration. Attagirl.

[NurseJen]

Evil temptress! How am I supposed to keep my cholesterol down with you dangling luscious fried fancies across my screen!?! (Oh, lard, how I've missed your silken embrace...)

[Alecto]

I feel heart failure coming on...

[grace]

looks like a bona fide apple fritter from where i'm sitting. yeah, i could definitely go for a couple of those right now. gorgeous.

[Marc @ NoRecipes]

Yummm! I mourned the day McDonalds stopped deep frying their apple pies.

[Adele]

I'm usually not one for apple pie, but fried apple pie definitely captures my interest.

[elspeth]

southern treats are always a favorite. for a northern twist, try buttermilk potato doughnuts——equally hard on the heart, but utterly delicious. i posted a recipe a few weeks ago
http://diaryofalocavore.blogspot.com/2008_03_02_archive.html
check it out if you're interested!

[Robert]

Being born in Georgia and raised in South Carolina, I think I qualify as a Real Southerner, but I don't have any corrections to make to your biscuit recipe--especially if you use lard instead of shortening. That pie looks perfect!

[Tammy]

Robert: Phew. Maybe some of the Southern genes are coming through after all.

Elspeth: Love that your recipe mentions Eastham turnip -- my favorite turnip of ALL TIME.

Adele: I'll fry most anything.

Marc: It's funny because McDonald's apple pies definitely came to mind when I bit into these. I wasn't going to admit it, though.

Grace: Excellent. I'm glad it passes muster.

Alecto: A beating heart is overrated.

NurseJen: Silken, indeed!

Aforkfulofspaghetti: The ice cream was Husband's brilliant idea. Caramel swirl. I recommend it.

[Sally]

As usual, I come to the table late...

Your grandma was beautiful. This is how I got my "recipes" from my kinfolk. Which is why I don't have any family recipes! That looks so good - and easy!

[Susan from Food Blogga]

This is a fantastic idea. I could gaze at these old photographs forever. Pearl is more than purty, she's beautiful. And those fried apple pies are perfection.

[Gwen]

I know, I'm coming a little late to this party, but I've been reading through your archives since I found your blog a few weeks back and just got to this post. I've been enjoying the history and now you've gotten to folks I can relate to. I thought I'd speak up just in case anyone would like to try the dried apples that were traditional in these pies since I do have a recipe. 2 cups of dried apples, soak in one and a half cup of warm water for an hour or two and then simmer until the apples are really soft. Pour off most of the water but don't actually drain them too well. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and half a cup of sugar. Stir until the butter and sugar melt and you have a sort of thick applesauce. That's your filling for these little pies for times of the year when apples weren't in season.

[Gwen]

I know, I'm coming a little late to this party, but I've been reading through your archives since I found your blog a few weeks back and just got to this post. I've been enjoying the history and now you've gotten to folks I can relate to. I thought I'd speak up just in case anyone would like to try the dried apples that were traditional in these pies since I do have a recipe. 2 cups of dried apples, soak in one and a half cup of warm water for an hour or two and then simmer until the apples are really soft. Pour off most of the water but don't actually drain them too well. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and half a cup of sugar. Stir until the butter and sugar melt and you have a sort of thick applesauce. That's your filling for these little pies for times of the year when apples weren't in season.

[zdalexander]

My grandma, Pearl Clementine Nice, was born in Tennessee in 1900, grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and lived in Texas her entire adult life. She made fantastic fried pies, with different fillings. One was made of dried apples similar to your recipe, and also a dried apricots fried pie -- YUM! -- using pie crust instead of biscuit. Apricot fried pies! After they were pan-fried, she sprinkled them with sugar. Nothing better! Sometimes she would make a batch of pies with various fillings. Don't forget peach, from the peach tree in her garden!! Lots of times the filling was from dried fruit, because that is what was available, with no refrigeration! Intensifies the flavor, besides being practical.

Grandma Pearl was born in Tennessee in 1900 and married at 16! She told stories about her childhood on a farm, one of eight children. In the summer, the girls' job was to string up the string beans, with needle and thread. The garlands of beans were hung in the attic or barn to dry. Many foodstuffs were dried for preservation. The fried pies were a very creative solution to the limitations they faced in the "old days", when fresh fruits and vegetables were not shipped in via airplane or ship, using expensive "foreign oil" and refrigeration, as we do today.

Grandma Pearl kept an old coffee can on the stove where she saved any leftover cooking oil, such as bacon fat, to use in her cooking. It was never refrigerated, and it never "went bad". I saw her give the full coffee can of "grease" to friends once or twice, a way of sharing the wealth!! A can of grease as a treasure?? Nothing better for fried catfish! We are all spoiled today, aren't we?

She had lots of other great recipes too! And I have lots of stories that I won't post here!

Died in Pampa, Texas in 1989, age 89, well-loved by all who knew her!

Love you grandma!

[Kim Martin]

I would like to know if Fried Apple Pies are made out of biscuit dough or pie dough.

[Margaret]

They're made out of either biscuit dough or pie crust dough, whichever one you want. I think most people who remember Grandma's kind, remember the ones with biscuit dough. At least if Grandma was born before 1940 or so. I prefer the biscuit dough kind, made with dried apples, because that's what I remember my grandma making.

[Retro Jordans]

Nice post. I really liked it.. Don't forget to update it regularly. I am looking for new updates dying to read more stuff from you.

[toni owens 10939 thornview dr sharonville oh 45241]

just read the recipe for fried appple pies and they are almost exactly as my grandmother, (whose maiden name was shepherd), and lived in hazard ky. I wonder if there is a relation? her family was arch shepherd from outside hazard. he had many family members whom all tended to wonder outside and never came back. he had several children and we have family we have never met. (we found most on ancestry.com) the records were from government rations list for families. anyway nice to see something familiar. toni owens