Recipe for New England Pie

In my research for my term papers, I was reading A Tramp Abroad to look for some Americana quotes. I came across this hilarious line that Mark Twain made in expression of American cookery. (Bet you thought I was going to be sharing a serious recipe here haha)

Recipe for New England Pie

To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work this into the form of a dish, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry it a couple days in a mild but unwavering temperature. Construct a cofer for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with closes, lemon peel and slabs of citron; add to portions of New Orleans sugar, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place until it petrifies. Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.


-Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad (1897)