Nantucket Cranberry Pie from Laurie Colwin
I am happy to share this recipe for Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which originally appeared in the November, 1993, issue of Gourmet. It appeared in an article written by Laurie Colwin. It's quick, easy and delicious, and I made it that year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I hadn’t thought about the pie for many years. Last week, I remembered it, but couldn’t recall when it appeared in the magazine or who created it. When I couldn’t find the recipe in my files or on Epicurious.com, I wrote a little post on my own blog, wondering how I’d find it. I also contacted some of my former colleagues at Gourmet to see if they could pinpoint it. We were all stumped.
Funnily enough, Mrs. Finch, a longtime friend of my mother in law, took my plight to heart and found the recipe by pecking around online. Someone somewhere had scanned the article for posterity.
I chuckled when I saw that the recipe was from Laurie Colwin and now appears in her book, More Home Cooking, A Writer Returns to the Kitchen (HarperCollins, 1993). Colwin died in 1992, but her writing surpasses time. In a wonderfully chatty and humane way, she artfully wove culinary conversation with universal topics such as friendships, family life, and everyday chaos. She was remarkably perceptive and understood that a harried home cook's culinary agenda was easily sidetracked by curious children, haphazard filing systems, and idiosyncratic house guests. I've always found it easy to relate to Laurie Colwin's cooking.
While rereading the book's chapter, "Waiting for Dessert", I smiled when I read these paragraphs introducing Nantucket Cranberry Pie:
"I like a cake that takes about four seconds to put together and gives an ambrosial result. Fortunately, there are such cakes, and usually you get them at the homes of others. You then purloin the recipe...and serve it to others, who then serve it to others. This is the way in which nations are unified and friendships made solid.
My candidate for an easy, spectacular dessert is something called Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which is not a pie, but a cake, and was served to me in the country by my friend Ann Gold, who lives on a dairy farm and got this recipe from her mother, who can no longer remember where it came from. It is a Gold family staple, and the buck stops there.”
Here’s the deliciously easy recipe, reprinted with permission from HarperCollins and presented in Colwin's unique recipe-writing style:
Nantucket Cranberry Pie
1. Chop enough cranberries to make 2 cups and enough walnuts to make ½ cup.
2. In the bottom of a 10-inch pie plate or springform pan, place chopped cranberries, chopped walnuts, and ½ cup sugar.
3. Mix 2 eggs, ¾ cup melted butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1 teaspoon almond extract. Stir till smooth.
4. Pour over cranberry walnut mixture and bake for 40 minutes at 350 F.
--Melissa A. Trainer
Dr Alice on December 05, 2009 at 03:33 PM
I've made this and it's delicious. I have both of Laurie Colwin's cookbooks and most of her fiction works and love all of them. I swear by her recipes, and a lot of what I cook comes from her cookbooks.
Dr Kim at Dogwood Ridge on December 06, 2009 at 05:48 AM
Ditto the above post. I am not a cook or a baker, just a country baby doc that sometimes wants to be thought of as just a wife and mother. Laurie Colwin's recipes, especially this one, makes me able to do just that!