Mulberry Pies

Let's Talk About Dripping

According to legend and folklore, there really were families that had dessert out of the CWA calendar every night. Sometimes, when the ingredients are all the sort of things that you might find in a decently stocked pantry, that seems obsessive but vaguely possible. Around early December, when every single recipe is for a slightly different plum pudding, that seems patently ridiculous. Then there are the ones like today’s recipe, that call for the use of an everyday ingredient that just…isn’t a thing any more.

We are going to put this suspiciously coloured ointment into our food

This Mulberry Pie recipe calls for short pastry made using 3 oz. of dripping. You know, the fatty liquid from roasted meat? That was enough for my mother to discount it entirely, and when I protested that the mulberries in the park just down the street were ripe, to at least consider substituting butter or oil or something. But, being a purist and an obsessive and more than a little bit of a sucker for punishment, I insisted on maintaining as much faithfulness to the recipe as possible. It would have to be dripping, actual real dripping. So she faithfully planned a beef roast for dinner and harvested what liquids she could in preparation¹. It’s possible that there’s a good way to harvest dripping, but doing so is definitely a lost art, at least in our family, but she gave it the good old college try. The result had a little more beefiness than I think either or us were hoping for considering that we were planning on putting it in a dessert.

The pastry mix looks…delicious

It didn’t look (or smell) that great, and mum wisely argued against its inclusion right up until I’d upended the jar. But what’s done is done, so we proceeded to make a very short pastry that turned out to be difficult and not all that pleasant to work. We eventually managed to line a muffin tray, spoon in the mulberry mix, and add lids, and then had to sit back and contemplate our life choices while we waited for the pies to bake.

The mulberries smelt delicious. The pastry also smelt.

The resulting six little pies had a little more beefiness than I think either or us were hoping for considering that they were a dessert. They weren’t bad, per se, but they were … upsetting on a deep, primal level. The lemon-enhanced mulberries had a real tart punch that elevated the whole dish, nearly managing to disguise the fact that there was something just a little strange about the pastry. Some bites were almost totally fine, but some definitely had the distinct flavour of old meat, which is not a flavour that anyone I had over for dinner that night particularly enjoyed.

They actually look pretty good.

The verdict? I’m glad we tried it, even if it wasn’t exactly a raging success. If we can work out how to do dripping properly, or just want to wimp out and use oil or something, these would totally be worth doing again. Mulberries rock. Heck, I’m going on go plant a mulberry tree so that I have my own supply.

I actually enjoyed mine a whole lot, but I don’t blame those that didn’t

The numbers so far:

The only thing we added to the count this time around was the sugar, so that’s gonna be good for the averages.

• Eggs: 17 (15 separated)

• Sugar: 5 2/12 cup, 8 tbsp

• Butter: 3 3/4 oz, 1/4 cup, 2 tbsp

• Milk: 1 quart, 1 pint

  

1. Truly, my mother is a saint