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4. In a large bowl, toss the apple chunks with all the other filling ingredients and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes. The apples will give off some of their juice and shrink and soften a bit. If you leave the apples much longer, they can become wrinkled and rubbery as they lose too much juice.

5. Resume the main recipe at step 11.

Sour Cherry Filling

This filling makes the classic American cherry pie of song and story. Sour cherries are also known as pie cherries and are in season from about July 1 to mid-August throughout much of the country except the West. They are best in early season—firm, very tart, and bright red. Buy only those with their stems intact. Sour cherries ferment quickly after the stems are removed; this leaves an opening for bacteria and oxygen. Individually frozen sour cherries can make fine pies year-round, but most frozen cherries are shipped only to supermarkets in midwestern states, where cherry pie is king.

9 cups fresh sour cherries, stems and pits intact

4½ tablespoons instant tapioca, whirled in a blender until it becomes powder

2¼ cups sugar (decreased by ¼ to ½ cup if, late in the season,

the cherries are particularly sweet for sour cherries)

1 tablespoon lemon juice, or more if the cherries are sweet

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon (scant) “pure” or “natural” almond extract

1. At least 2½ hours before you plan to bake the pie, make the cherry filling. Wash, stem, and pit the cherries (you should now have 6 cups), putting them into a nonreactive, 4-quart saucepan. (Williams-Sonoma and the Back to Basics catalog have inexpensive little plastic pitting machines that shorten the labor by at least half. They encourage you to make cherry pies.)

2. Mix all the other ingredients with the cherries, and let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

3. Bring the cherry mixture to a simmer over medium heat and cook for about 5 minutes, until it thickens.

4. Let the filling cool for 1½ hours or longer, the last 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Warm fillings melt crusts.

5. No more than 20 minutes before the cherry mixture is cool, make the piecrust in the main recipe through step 10, this page. If you are using Crisco and the weather is cool, there is no need to refrigerate the circles of dough. Pour the cherries and their juice into the bottom crust in step 11.

Peach Filling

4 pounds peaches (about 9 large or 16 medium)

1 lemon, cut in half

½ cup well-packed light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 pinch nutmeg

1 pinch mace

¼ teaspoon (scant) “pure” or “natural” almond extract

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 tablespoon arrowroot

1. Before making the piecrust, peel the peaches. If you dip each of them in boiling water for 15 seconds, the skins will slip off with the aid of a paring knife. Put them into a large bowl. Toss with the juice of one lemon half to prevent the peaches from browning.

Halve the peaches, remove their pits, and cut each into wedges nearly an inch at their thickest, returning the wedges to the bowl and tossing them with the juice of the remaining lemon half. You should have about 8 cups of peach wedges.

2. Make the piecrust in the main recipe through step 10, this page.

3. While the dough returns to room temperature, mix all the remaining filling ingredients in a small bowl. Just before pouring the peaches into the bottom crust, toss them with this mixture. Adjust by 2 or 3 tablespoons the amount of both types of sugar if the peaches are especially sweet or especially tart.

Wild Blueberry Filling

Wild blueberries are smaller and more fragile than cultivated blueberries and have a much finer flavor and more interesting texture. A couple of summers ago in the Northeast, they were in season from August 1 to August 28. In a pinch you can use fresh cultivated blueberries or even frozen blueberries. The recipe works fine with raspberries, blackberries, and most others, but strawberries require special treatment. Arrowroot is added to the cornstarch to make the juice shiny and transparent.

6 cups wild blueberries

2 cups sugar

5 tablespoons