Roll out a sufficient quantity of the best puff paste, or sugar paste; and with oval or circular cutters, cut it out into seven or eight pieces of different sizes; stamping the middle of each with the cutter you intend using for the next. Bake them all separately, and when they are cool, place them on a dish in a pyramid, (gradually diminishing in size,) the largest piece at the bottom, and the smallest at the top. Take various preserved fruits, and lay some of the largest on the lower piece of paste; on the next place fruit that is rather smaller; and so on till you finish at the top with the smallest sweetmeats you have. The upper one may be not so large as a half-dollar, containing only a single raspberry or strawberry.
Notch all the edges handsomely. You may ornament the top or pinnacle of the pyramid with a sprig of orange blossom or myrtle.
Take fine juicy acid apples; pare, core, and cut them into small pieces. Have ready a deep dish that has been lined with paste. Fill it with the apples; strewing among them layers of brown sugar, and adding the rind of a lemon pared thin, and also the juice squeezed in, or some essence of lemon. Put on another sheet of paste as a lid; close the edges well, and notch them. Bake the pie in a moderate oven, about three quarters of an hour. Eat it with cream and sugar, or with cold boiled custard.
If the pie is made of early green apples, they should first be stewed with a very little water and plenty of brown sugar.
What are called sweet apples are entirely unfit for cooking, as they become tough and tasteless; and it is almost impossible to get them sufficiently done.
When you put stewed apples into baked shells, grate nutmeg over the top. You may cover them with cream whipped to a stiff froth, and heaped on them.
Cranberries and gooseberries should be stewed with sugar before they are put into paste. Peaches should be cut in half or quartered, and the stones taken out. The stones of cherries and plums should also be extracted.
Raspberries or strawberries, mixed with cream and white sugar, may he put raw into baked shells.
Take the young green stalks of the rhubarb plant, or spring fruit as it is called in England; and having peeled off the thin skin, cut the stalks into small pieces about an inch long, and put them into a sauce-pan with plenty of brown sugar, and its own juice. Cover it, and let it stew slowly till it is soft enough to mash to a marmalade. Then set it away to cool. Have ready some fresh baked shells; fill them with the stewed rhubarb, and grate white sugar over the top.