Marionberry Pie

Oregon's best-loved dessert: the intense, wine-dark marionberry, the Willamette Valley's own bred blackberry, baked under a lattice crust and served warm with ice cream

Origin: United States

From the journey of Blackberry.

The marionberry is Oregon's own berry and its quiet pride, a blackberry cultivar bred by the United States Department of Agriculture, trialled in the Willamette Valley, and released in 1956, taking its name from Marion County where it was chiefly grown. Descended from the Californian loganberry and olallieberry lines, it bears a medium-sized, deeply coloured berry of an intense, complex flavour, earthier and more aromatic than an ordinary blackberry, with a balance of sweetness and tart, winey depth that many cooks hold to be the finest of all blackberries for the kitchen. Oregon grows the great majority of the world's marionberries, and though most of the crop is frozen for jam and pie filling, the fruit's supreme fresh form is the marionberry pie, the unofficial state dessert, sold at every farm stand, county fair, and diner counter through the brief August season and long after. Baked under a lattice or a full crust, the fruit's dark juice thickened just enough to hold, the marionberry pie shows off exactly what makes the berry special: a fruit that tastes more intensely of blackberry than the blackberry itself.

Ingredients

Pastry

350 g plain flour
1 tsp salt
250 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
90 ml iced water, approximately

Filling

900 g marionberries (or blackberries), fresh or frozen
190 g caster sugar
40 g cornstarch
1 tbsp lemon juice
0.25 tsp salt

Assembly

1 whole egg, beaten, for glazing
1 tbsp demerara sugar, for sprinkling

Method

Make the pastry: rub or pulse the cold butter into the flour and salt to coarse crumbs, then add just enough iced water to bring it together. Divide in two, one piece a little larger for the base, flatten into discs, wrap, and chill for at least an hour.
Gently toss the marionberries with the sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and salt. If using frozen berries, thaw slightly and drain off some of the released juice before mixing.
Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan) with a baking tray inside. Roll the larger disc and line a 23 cm pie dish. Fill with the fruit, mounding it well. Roll the second disc and cut it into strips for a lattice.
Lay the lattice over the fruit, trim, and crimp the strips into the rim to seal. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and sprinkle with demerara sugar.
Bake on the hot tray for 20 minutes, then reduce to 180°C (160°C fan) and bake for a further 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is deep golden and the juices bubble thickly. Cool for at least 2 hours before slicing. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Notes

Fresh marionberries are rarely found outside Oregon, but the frozen fruit is exported and any good blackberry, or a mixture of blackberry with a few boysenberries or raspberries, makes a fine pie. The marionberry's whole appeal is its intense, winey flavour, so keep the seasonings simple and let the fruit speak; a scrape of lemon zest or a spoon of crème de mûre in the filling flatters it, but heavy spicing does not. Serve with vanilla ice cream, the Oregon way, or with lightly whipped cream.

The Gastrographer

Name: Marionberry Pie
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 55 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: 350 g plain flour; 1 tsp salt; 250 g cold unsalted butter, cubed; 90 ml iced water, approximately; 900 g marionberries (or blackberries), fresh or frozen; 190 g caster sugar; 40 g cornstarch; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 0.25 tsp salt; 1 whole egg, beaten, for glazing; 1 tbsp demerara sugar, for sprinkling

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control