Retro Pies: A Collection of Celebrated Family Recipes

Chock full of color-saturated vintage illustrations of cheerful women and lattice-topped pies, this book offers more to a collector of memorabilia than to a serious baker. Though the""pie crust clinic"" does contain marginally helpful tips--like,""if the crust doesn't taste right: too much or not enough salt was used""--the book is short on technique and long on Americana. There are anecdotes about Abe Lincoln's favorite lemon pie and Martha Washington's cherry pie, but only four recipes for crusts. The book is separated into Main Dish Pies, Fruit Pies and Custard Pies, and includes an alphabetized list of each section (though it would have been helpful to index pies by ingredient rather than by ambiguous recipe titles like Peninsula Surprise Pie). The recipes themselves are from the good ol' days, and hence are heavy on fat and sugar; while most encourage use of fresh ingredients, New England Leftover Turkey Pie requires condensed soup, frozen peas and stuffing mix. Light on content, heavy on layout, this book offers little practical information that cannot be found in Betty Crocker, or any basic cookbook, the recipe for schintz being the only notable exception. That said, the pictures are delightful, and should make any baker feel nostalgia's sweet pangs.