FoodNetArchive

Cooking for profit

1886

Page 12

Presented as published in 1886. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Grate rind of lemon into a small sauce- pan, using a tin grater and scraping oflf with a fork what adheres. Squeeze in the juice, scrape out the pulp, chop it, put in the water and boil. Mix the su- gar and flour together dry and stir them into the boiling liquor. When half thick- ened take it off and let finish in the pies. The above makes two large pies or three small. It is necessary to be par- ticular to get the right amount of flour. The mixture is pale yellow from the rind and sugar. Put top crust as well as bottom on these pies. Cost of material 10c — pies each 8 or 9 cents. Cut in 4. There are some immense bakeries in the city of Chicago and one of them is peculiar in that it turns out nothing but pies. It has grown up to its pres- ent dimensions from being a mere corner pie shop, and even yet one of the firm, the working partner, bakes aU the pies himself, indeed he says that so close is the margin of profit in the business that when once he was laid up by a spell of sickness the loss during his absence amounted to about three hundred dol- lars per week. Hotel keepers and oth- ers who have to hire inefficient help and who see things burnt up and wasted will understand how that might be; and then there is the important matter of buying cheaply and well. The people of the present time are ac- tuated by all sorts of queer desires and ambitions. Some want to go around the world in eighty days, some want to walk a thousand miles in so many hours, and the grand goal in view tliat COOKING FOR PROFIT. 11 the owners of this great pie factory have Bet themselves the task of reaching or die ill the attempt is the production of a million pies in a year. Two years ago the numoer turned out in the course of twelve months had reached to eight hundred and thirty thousand, and it did seem as though the remaining trifle of one hundred and seventy thousand pies might be compassed in the succeeding year, making it a round million in twelve months, however it was not to be. Whether somebody had a corner on pumpkins that year, or whether apples were high through increased shipments to Europe where pies cannot go, or whether pies had begun to go out of fashion, or strong rivalry with this firm had sprung up so it was that the sales actually fell twenty-five thousand pies short of the greatest pie year. Still the prospect is good for the firm to achieve the object of their ambition. The pop- ulation of the city is still increasing and no new or alarming accusations against pie have been started of late. This es- tablishment possesses six carrying vans, five of which are of the capacity of om- nibiisses and are as finely painted. They cost five hundred dollars each, have horses to match and each van takes out five hundred pies at every trip. The customers are lunch counter keepers and restaurants, hotels and boarding houses, bakeries, groceriet? and private houses, all over the city. They run five huge rotary ovens of which the doors are nev- er closed, but the pies put in at the front pass around the interior on the revolving floor and come to the door again done and ready to taken out. Of course their pies are good or they could never hope to sell a million a year, and the sorts they make are quite numerous in variety. Still they are cheap. 23— Lemon Cream Pie.