Who's up for some Sour Orange Pie?

Sour Orange Pie 

The link above is to an article on Sour Orange Pie in Atlas Obscura that my spouse sent me this week. I am sharing it in this blog because it is a treat that was popular in the 1920s. I am sure our characters would have run across this regional dish on their Florida adventures. Like other cold desserts from the era, Cornelia and company would be eager to taste this one. This means that I am on the hunt for some sour oranges and will be making this soon.

I have always enjoyed having historic recipes and trying them out in my kitchen. I may get the chance to try it elsewhere first since the article mentions a festival for sour oranges. I have to admit, I'm a little worried about the other name for this fruit "bitter orange" which doesn't sound tasty at all. I'm hoping it is more tart than bitter, but either way, I'm looking forward to trying this one. I have never had a slice of sour orange pie. In fact, the only time I've seen a sour orange recipe is for a dessert that was served at Martha Washington's table. 

Mount Vernon Dessert

Perhaps when Cornelia retires at the end of book four in the Three Snowbirds Series there will be more recipes showing up in the series. She will have a real kitchen and time to cook for the first time since she left home. 

In the books, we always do a cocktail recipe that Teddy has discovered in her travels, but Cornelia isn't much of a drinker. She does enjoy a good slab of pie, not to mention other foods. Cold desserts were all the rage in the 1920s so we can expect to see more of them. Who knows what other foods she will discover in her travels?

Helen Reilly aka Abby Kieran

Helen Reilly was born in New York City in 1891. Her father was John Michael Kieran, the president of Hunter College, and her brother, John Kieran, produced the famous Information Please series, a radio program that showcased his encyclopedic learning. Helen married Paul Reilly, an artist and cartoonist, in 1914 before she completed her degree from Hunter. They were an unusual couple for the time, Helen was the main breadwinner for the family. The couple had four daughters, two of whom, Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, followed in their mother’s footsteps as mystery writers. When Helen was asked about the effect of her success on her husband she replied, "I make the living, but he makes living worthwhile."

At the urging of her lifelong friend, William McFee, an eminent author, Reilly began writing detective stories. Almost all of her stories are police procedurals that feature Inspector Christopher McKee and follow the formula of a detailed presentation of a homicide investigation, told from the point of view of the police. It is easy to understand Reilly’s reason for writing this way—her stories were major successes. She wrote thirty-three mysteries in her thirty-year career, as well as three others under the pen name Kieran Abbey. The leading magazines of the time that published popular fiction, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, often featured her work. She served as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1953.

She lived in Connecticut for a number of years; this state is the setting of Certain Sleep (1961). After her husband died in 1944, she returned to New York. Although she eventually moved from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to live with her daughter Ursula Curtiss and Ursula’s family, she always considered herself a native New Yorker. She died on January 11, 1962, continuing to write almost to the end of her life.