It’s grape season here in Michigan, and this year I decided to take some of our bounty and make a grape pie!
This is Concord Grape Pie from the 1966 printing of Better Homes and Gardens Pies and Cakes. There were actually quite a few grape pie recipes in my collection, but this one had crumb topping on it, which I was very excited about.
- 1 1/2 lbs of concord grapes
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup AP Flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 T lemon juice
- 2 T butter or margarine, melted
- For Topping:
- 1/2 cup AP Flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup butter or margarine
- Unbaked 9 inch pie crust
- Slip skins from grapes, set skins aside. Bring pulp to boil; reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Press through sieve to remove seeds. Add skins to pulp.
- Combine sugar, AP flour and salt. Add lemon juice, butter and the grape mixture. Pour into unbaked pie shell.
- Combine the topping ingredients until crumbly. Sprinkle over pie.
- Bake in 400 degree oven about 40 minutes.
So, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that we get lots of grapes every year. Lots and lots and lots of grapes.
Lots.
We have a concord grape vine in our backyard that is truly, truly old. It is also massive and produces probably 10-15 pounds of grapes every year. And we are getting really, really sick of grape jelly. So, this year when our enormous grape harvest was ripe, I gave most of it away, but kept back a bit for experimenting for Mid-Century Menu.
By the way, every year I grow a new appreciation for seedless grapes. Every try seeding 10 pounds of grapes? Yeah…not that fun.
But crumb topping is fun. Lots and lots of crumb topping.
And oozy fruit pies are fun, too!
“This is so grape-y”
“Is it good?”
“If I hadn’t spent hours seeding grapes today, it would probably be really good. But I am pretty sick of grapes right now.”
The Verdict: Sweet, But Very Good
From The Tasting Notes:
The texture of this pie is like a cherry pie, except it is very, very grape-y. Very sweet, with none of the tangy balance that comes with sour fruit pies, like cherry, blackberry or rhubarb. But still very good. The filling also thickened up very well, and wasn’t runny at all. If you happen to have a grape vine in your backyard that went insane this year, you should try this pie! Well, I guess you would be able to try many of these pies!
This looks so good! Can’t even imagine prepping all those grapes, though!
I vaguely remember trying this years ago, all I remember was it was a hella lot of work preparing the grapes. Could the cup of sugar be reduced, would that affect the pie firming up? It IS delicious, during grape season Concord grape pies that are offered for sale are snapped up immediately.
We had a small grapevine (among tons of fruit trees) in our yard when I was kid. My nana made homemade grape juice but I don’t remember grape pie or hearing about grape pie! lol! It’s sound interesting.
Tom is such a trooper. If I had to put up with MCM, I’d be ~15 kilos over weight
Ohhh…my great-grandma used to make a grape pie. I wonder if this was the recipe she used? IIRC, she even threw in some golden raisins for texture. I may have to try this out. Looks great!
So nice to see Smiling Tom. That’s kind of, uh, rare…
Ha! You sound like me and lemons! 🙂 Wow…..that IS seriously A LOT of grapes though….wish I lived closer, I’d take some grapes from y’all…..and girl that pie looks divine!
That’s what I was thinking… how does one and how long does it take to skin 1.5 pounds of them?
Nifty! I made my very first muscadine pie (southern grapes) last month!
I think betta withoot the skins!