The regional table / Michigan
Traverse City Cherry Pie
Use frozen cherries. Not as a compromise — the federal standard for a cherry pie allows them by name, and the fruit is better for it.
Northern Michigan's claim on this pie is written into federal regulation. The tart cherry marketing order at 7 CFR part 930 defines its "Production area" as "the States of Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin" and then divides that area into nine districts — one apiece for the other six states, and three for Michigan alone: Northern, Central and Southern. District 1, Northern Michigan, is "that portion of the State of Michigan which is north of a line drawn along the northern boundary of Mason County and extended east to Lake Huron", which is the orchard country above Traverse City. Board seats are handed out by tonnage, four of them to any district growing more than 80 million pounds. The fruit itself is defined at § 930.3 as "all tart/sour cherry varieties grown in the production area classified botanically as Prunus cerasas" — the rule's own spelling of cerasus, uncorrected in the Code for decades. This is a crop so concentrated in one state, and so prone to gluts, that the Secretary of Agriculture can order part of it withheld from the market in a heavy year.
The second document explains why your cherries should come out of a freezer bag. USDA Circular No. 981, "Grower Handling of Red Cherries" by J. H. Levin and H. P. Gaston, published in 1956 as a contribution of the Department of Agriculture in cooperation with the Agricultural Experiment Station of Michigan State University, describes what used to happen between the orchard and the plant: "the lugs of cherries often are stacked in tiers in the hot summer sun", "The heat developed by respiration increases the temperature of the fruit", and "The amount of scald and fungus that develops in cherries increases rapidly as the temperature rises and the holding time is extended." Experiments were initiated in Michigan in 1952 to fix it, and what came out of them was the hydrocooling and transportation in water method — cherries tipped straight from the picker's pail into tanks of water. A tart cherry is a fruit that begins failing within hours of being picked; freezing it is not second best, it is the industry's own answer. The FDA agrees in its standard for frozen cherry pie at 21 CFR 152.126, which specifies "mature, pitted, stemmed cherries that are fresh, frozen, and/or canned" and sets the bar for quality at a washed and drained cherry weight of "not less than 25 percent of the weight of the pie".
Why this version works
Sour cherries, not sweet. A Montmorency is roughly twice as acidic as a Bing and that acidity is the entire reason for the cup and a quarter of sugar. Sweet cherries in a pie give you a flat, jammy filling with nothing to cut it, and they collapse to mush because their flesh is softer. The regulation's definition is the right shopping list: tart and sour varieties only.
Frozen fruit, thawed and drained. Frozen tart cherries were picked ripe, cooled fast and pitted by machine, which is more than can be said for most fresh fruit at a supermarket. Thawing them releases about a cup of juice, and reducing that juice separately concentrates flavour you would otherwise boil away inside the pie.
A vented lattice, not a solid lid. That water has to leave. A lattice lets steam out across the whole surface while the filling boils, which is how the starch gets fully cooked and how the juice reduces rather than pooling under a sealed roof.
Cornstarch, and more of it than feels right. A third of a cup for two pounds of fruit. Tart cherries carry more free water than any other pie fruit and their acid weakens starch as it cooks. Under-thicken and the pie floods the plate; the filling should look slightly too stiff in the pan and settle to exactly right as it cools.
