Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

• 1 generous quart rhubarb, peeled and cut up
• 3 cups sugar
• 3 whole sweet oranges
• 2 blades mace
• 1/2 cup, scant cold water
• pie crusts

Instructions

1. To a generous quart of rhubarb, peeled and cut up, put three cups sugar, the pulp scooped from three sweet oranges, thin bits of the yellow peel, two blades of mace broken small, and a scant half-cup of cold water.
2. Cover the pan and set for thirty minutes in a hot oven — uncover then and cook for five minutes longer.
3. The result is a sweet excellent for many uses — as a sauce, as a substitute for marmalade, as the foundation of pies, tarts, shortcakes, even as a filling for layer cake.
4. Make pies from it with two crusts, or with lattice crusts as usual. Make it into tarts, into turnovers, or put between hot buttered layers for a hurry-up shortcake.
5. Best of all, make it into meringue pies or tarts: bake the crusts after pricking them well, cover thinly with either good meringue or the frosting directed for the cheese cakes, let it harden, then at the minute of serving cover with a thin layer of the prepared rhubarb — the meringue or frosting will stay crisp until eaten if you work quickly enough.
6. Young unpeeled tender rhubarb gives a pink sauce; older stalks peeled furnish a translucent green. Either is sufficiently decorative, and can be made more so if the tarts they appear on have a cherry or preserved strawberry dropped in the middle of them.