One holiday season, I decided I was going to learn how to make a pie. Not only was I going to make a pie, I was going to become a pie expert. And any pie expert needs to own the definitive pie book. This is that book. Even though it is copyrighted in 1949, it is still in print today.

The introduction gives some history of pastries, followed by a chapter on technical data. This was a really useful chapter -- it discusses the basic elements of a pie and how to choose quality ingredients. It also explains how to make whipped toppings, meringues, how to roll the crust and other pie mysteries.

The next chapter has over 25 crust recipes, some with several variations. After that are almost 400 pie recipes. It is overwhelming. The directions are usually clear and easy to follow. I made three pies that year. For the first two, I used a crust recipe I found somewhere else (that was supposed to be low-fat) and for the filling I combined the apple cranberry pie recipe (p. 71) with an apple cranberry cobbler recipe I've had for a while. It was tasty. For the third, I used the same crust recipe and the pumpkin pineapple pie recipe (p. 239). It was ok.

I discovered that making pies was a pain, just like my Grandma warned me. I'm not sure I'll ever make another one. But, this book was a really helpful guide to my great pie-making experiment.