We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee
makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season
without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
– Marcus Aurelius
Concord Grape Pie
Our Thoughts:
It’s soooo good! For me, because it’s a regional fingerlakes favorite, this is the taste of fall, and childhood.
The pie seizes up as it cooks, making a wonderfully gooey dessert with just a hint of the lemon, which only intensifies the flavor of the grapes. The aroma curls through the house, tempting tendrils nearly as perceptible as cartoon animation, luring you to the kitchen. The taste is an explosion of grapeness, as though you are eating Platonic Concord grapes, sun-warmed from the vine.
Why it should be in the next book:
Because it’s delicious! It’s a perfect pie for the Redwynes, as their economy revolves entirely around the export of grapes and wines. It would be almost inevitable that they would have a very grape-centric cuisine, and this pie would, for them, be as much a staple of their pantry as apple pies in New England. At least before the reavers hit…
Concord Grape Pie Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 cups Concord grapes (a little over 2 quarts)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 (9 inch) pie shell (get a recipe, or use your own)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Squeeze the pulp out of the skins into a saucepan, saving the skins in a bowl. Cook the pulp in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the guts break down and the seeds separate from the grape.
Press the cooked grapes through a sieve and add to the skins. Discard the seeds. Add sugar, flour and lemon juice to the grapes.
Pour into an unbaked 9 inch pie crust and make a lattice top.
Bake at 375 degrees F for about 50 minutes. This pie may overflow, so you may wish to put a pan underneath it.
Putting it in the next book would create a wonderful cross pollination of times, places and tastes. A grape pie is singularly one of the best and most unusual pies in creation.
How hilarious that I checked for updates on your site and found this as I’m watching Battle Grapes on Iron Chef America! Your recipe should fit right in!!
Lovely!! I’m now anxious to try this!
That crust is gorgeous!!
Spread the family love!!!! I would be elated of GRRM put this in the next book! I love your crust :)
I happened across this recipe the day after you posted it, while making home made Concord grape juice. Set aside 4 cups of grapes and found this the best decision I’ve ever made. If you can resist, leave it in the fridge to cool overnight. You’ll be glad you did. Not only did it taste great the next day, every day after somehow made it taste even better.
Thanks for your great site and good luck with your book!
What sort or flavor of grapes should I use if I can’t get Concord grapes?
Unfortunately, this recipe is really only for Concord grapes. However! Through some creative googling, I’ve found these recipes, which look like they would work with just about any seedless grape:
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/dessert/recipe-green-grape-pie-121225
http://www.grouprecipes.com/71842/heavenly-harvest-seedless-grape-pie.html
I can’t guarantee they’ll work, but the reviews look good! Let us know how it turns out! :)
In the same vein, where can I get some Concord grapes in Boston? I looked in the supermarket but they only seem to have boring California seedless…
Try Whole Foods, they had them the last time I was there (Sunday).
Is there any special reason why its concordia grapes? I can’t find them in any store where i live in sweden
Unfortunately, it’s a regional variety, and I’m not sure whether or not it is available outside of the US. I know that some jarred fillings can be purchased online, but the shipping might be on the pricey side.
Not sure if another kind of grape might be able to be used or not- Concord grapes are unique in that the insides can be easily squeezed out of the skins.
If anyone else is inclined to try this recipe with the wild grapes commonly found in New England, as I did, be aware that wild grapes contain more tartrate (tartaric acid) than the cultivated Concord does. I ended up making a pie that caused tingling lips and an odd sensation in the back of the throat for me, while not causing these in the two other people who ate the pie (it was delicious, incidentally). The usual way of removing tartrate when wild grapes are juiced is apparently keeping the juice in the fridge for a day or so, during which time the tartrate precipitates as a gray sludge.
Sounds great. I’m glad to see this get play. If you like your pies a little less intensely sweet, it still works great with half the sugar.
I used regular seedless grapes. What should be the consistency when it comes out of the oven? Still liquidy?
Hmmm… using regular grapes probably threw off the recipe. With Concord grapes, which are sadly only available for about a month in the northeast autumn, it’s often still a little runny when hot, but seizes up nicely when it has cooled. I’ve seen a medieval recipe for a grape tart that uses ordinary grapes, so I’ll give that a go and post the recipe soon!
Thank you for the recipe. We haven’t cut in to it yet but I made this today for an ‘end of summer pie social’ hosted by my educator daughter holding on to the last weekend before the start of school. I can hardly wait to try it! I even put the ‘grapes’ on top. The changes I made were half the sugar & twice the flour, used 2/3 thom-cord and the rest champagne grapes. Very sweet by themselves.
The pie was great! Thanks again.
So glad to hear it!
This looks amazing! I would love to see another book with more dishes themed around the other provinces of Westeros! I can’t wait to try to make this one. I don’t have a lot of experience with making pies though.
You are in luck! I’m working on a second cookbook now.