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The regional table / Maine

Maine Wild Blueberry Pie

Published September 23, 2026 · Maine

A deep-dish double-crust blueberry pie with a vented lid, cut to show dark purple small berries holding their shape in a glossy set filling
A clean wedge that stands up is the test. If the filling runs into the gap, it went into the pie without enough starch or came out of the oven without enough time. AI-generated illustration.
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A Maine newspaper printed the whole recipe in 1900, and the striking thing is how little sugar it wanted: a quarter of a cup for an entire pie.

The Biddeford Daily Journal of 13 August 1900 carried it on page three, in a column of household receipts between a caper sauce and a peach pudding. "BLUEBERRY PIE. Pick the berries over, turn into a colander, and rinse in a deep pan of water. Line a plate with paste and rim. Mix one-quarter of a cup of sugar with one tablespoonful of flour, put half of this on the lower crust, dot with bits of butter, add the berries, heap them in the center, add the remainder of the sugar, wet the edge, cover with a crust, press it down closely and bake about half an hour." The same text ran again in the weekly edition four days later. A quarter cup of sugar, one tablespoon of flour, butter under the fruit and nothing else in it — no lemon, no spice, no measured quantity of berries at all, because whoever wrote it assumed you had gone and picked them.

The berry in question has a legal identity here. Under 1 MRSA §219, enacted in 1991, "The wild blueberry (vaccinium angustifolium, aiton) is the official state berry", and under 1 MRSA §226, "Blueberry pie, made with wild Maine blueberries, is the official state dessert." That is a statute naming a species and then naming the pie you make from it. The lowbush plant is not a small version of the supermarket blueberry: it is a different, native, ground-hugging thing that nobody has bred, and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension publishes on the cultivated highbush kind separately, in Bulletin #2253. Extension Bulletin #2096, Burning Wild Blueberry Land in Maine, by Lily Calderwood, Jordan Parks and Leala Machesney, records that prescribed fire on these fields "was first practiced by the First Peoples of Canada who found that burning temporarily improved soil quality, enhanced the growing habits of berry species, and increased bud production", and that "All wild blueberry fields were burn-pruned until research was done using a flail mower to prune in the late 1970s" — a change made, the bulletin says, "to mitigate the high cost of heating oil and serious air quality issues". One correction to the story as it is usually told: the two-year cycle is entirely real, but the fire mostly is not any more. Bulletin #2096 states plainly that today most wild blueberry fields are mowed, not burned, and that it is chiefly organic growers who still burn, because fire is a pest tool their system otherwise lacks.

Why this version works

Sugar that stops short of jam. Two-thirds of a cup for five cups of fruit keeps the pie tart enough that you taste the berry rather than the sweetness. Wild blueberries are noticeably sharper than cultivated ones, and the temptation is to sugar them up to the level people expect from a bakery pie. Resist it; the acid is the entire reason for using these berries.

Cooling is part of the cooking. The filling is not set when the pie comes out — it is set four hours later, at room temperature. Cutting a blueberry pie warm is the single commonest way to end up with a puddle, and no adjustment to the starch will save you from doing it.

A hot start, then a long steady bake. Twenty minutes at 425°F sets the bottom crust before the juice can soak into it, and the drop to 375°F gives the starch the forty minutes it needs to hydrate properly. Starch that has only just come to a boil looks thick in the oven and turns to liquid on the plate.

Small berries, so less of everything else. A lowbush berry is a fraction of the size of a cultivated one and carries less water and more skin for its weight. That means more flavour per cup, more natural pectin, and far less liquid to thicken — which is why the 1900 recipe could get away with one tablespoon of flour and why this one gets away with three of cornstarch where a highbush pie would need five.

Ingredient notes

Lemon: a tablespoon of juice, no more, and no zest. It is there to keep the fruit tasting like fruit, not to be tasted on its own. Cinnamon and nutmeg are not in the 1900 recipe and are not in this one; on a berry this sharp they read as a cover-up.

Starch: three tablespoons of cornstarch gives a clean set that lets the fruit stay bright. Flour, as in 1900, works and reads more old-fashioned, but needs about a third more of it and leaves the filling slightly cloudy. Tapioca is the third option and gives the glossiest result of the three.

Berries: five cups of wild lowbush blueberries, fresh if you are within reach of them in August and frozen the rest of the year. Frozen wild berries work extremely well and should go into the pie still frozen, tossed straight with the sugar and starch — thawing them first releases a cup of juice you then have to thicken.

Butter and flour for the pastry: an all-butter double crust, made with cold butter left in visible flakes and the barest amount of ice water that will bring it together. Roll it cold, chill the shaped pie again before it goes into the oven, and it will hold its edges.

Step by step

  1. Make and chill the pastry. Rub or cut the cold butter into the flour, salt and sugar until the largest pieces are the size of peas, then bring it together with 6 to 8 tablespoons of ice water. Divide in two, flatten into discs and refrigerate at least an hour.
  2. Line the plate. Roll the first disc to about 12 inches and lay it into a 9-inch pie plate without stretching it, leaving the overhang alone for now. Chill it while you make the filling. Heat the oven to 425°F with a rack in the lower third and a sheet pan on it.
  3. Toss the filling. Stir the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a large bowl, add the berries and lemon juice, and turn everything over until no dry starch is visible. If the berries are frozen, work quickly and do not let them thaw.
  4. Fill and lid. Scrape the fruit into the shell and heap it slightly in the middle. Dot with the cold butter. Roll the second disc, lay it over, trim to a half-inch overhang, fold under and crimp, then cut four generous vents. Brush with egg wash and scatter with coarse sugar.
  5. Bake hot, then moderate. Bake 20 minutes at 425°F on the hot sheet pan, then drop the oven to 375°F and bake 40 to 50 minutes more, until the crust is deep gold and the juice coming through the vents is bubbling thickly and slowly rather than running thin.
    Dark purple blueberry filling bubbling through the vents of a golden double-crust pie
    Bake until thick, slow bubbles rise through the vents; thin juice means the filling needs longer. AI-generated illustration.
  6. Cool it completely. Leave the pie on a rack for at least 4 hours before cutting. It will still be faintly warm in the middle and it will be properly set, which a pie cut at the two-hour mark will not be.
If juice floods the plate when you cut it, the pie was either cut early or underbaked, and the two look identical on the counter. Chill what is left for three hours and the slices will firm up enough to serve, though the bottom crust never fully recovers. If the top browned long before the filling bubbled, cover it loosely with foil and keep going — the pie is not done until the vents show thick, lazy bubbles, and pulling it early to save the colour guarantees a loose filling. A soggy bottom means the pie went into a cold oven or onto a cold shelf: bake on a preheated sheet pan, low in the oven, every time. And if the filling came out stiff and dull instead of glossy, there was too much starch for the amount of fruit; next time weigh the berries rather than measuring them by cup.

Storage and make-ahead

The pie keeps 2 days at room temperature under a loose tent of foil and 4 in the refrigerator, though the crust softens after the first day. Do not wrap it tightly; trapped steam is what turns the lid to pastry paste.

It freezes better unbaked than baked. Assemble the whole pie, freeze it solid on a tray, wrap it, and bake it from frozen at 425°F for 25 minutes and then 375°F for about an hour. Slices of baked pie also freeze, but they come back damp.

What to serve with it

Vanilla ice cream is the usual and the best of it, because the cold plays against a pie that has been sitting out all afternoon. Unsweetened whipped cream is the other right answer. What this pie does not want is anything else fruit-flavoured on the plate competing with a berry that is already doing all the work.

A deep-dish double-crust blueberry pie with a vented lid, cut to show dark purple small berries holding their shape in a glossy set filling

From the recipe box / Maine

Maine Wild Blueberry Pie

A double-crust pie built on small sharp lowbush berries, sugared lightly and thickened with a spoonful of starch, so it sets without turning into jam.

Prep
35 min
Cook
1 hr 10 min
Total
5 hr 45 min, including cooling
Serves
8
Calories
496 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Cut the cold butter into the flour, salt and sugar, bind with ice water, divide in two and chill at least 1 hour.
  2. Roll one disc, line a 9-inch plate and refrigerate it. Heat the oven to 425°F with a sheet pan on a low rack.
  3. Toss the sugar, cornstarch and salt with the berries and lemon juice until no dry starch remains.
  4. Fill the shell, dot with cold butter, lay on the top crust, crimp, cut four vents, then egg wash and sugar it.
  5. Bake 20 minutes at 425°F on the hot sheet pan, then 40–50 minutes at 375°F until the vents bubble thickly.
  6. Cool on a rack at least 4 hours before cutting.

Nutrition

Fat26 g (16 g saturated)
Sodium340 mg
Protein5 g
ServingOne eighth of a 9-inch pie
Calories496
Cholesterol80 mg
Carbohydrates61 g (26 g sugar, 4 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Do frozen wild blueberries work?

They work very well and they are how most people outside Maine will make this. Keep them frozen right up to the moment they go into the shell, toss them with the sugar and starch while still hard, and add about ten minutes to the second stage of the bake. Thawing them first floods the bowl with juice and you end up thickening a syrup rather than a pie.

Why is there no cinnamon or nutmeg in it?

Because there is none in the Maine printing this is built on, and because a wild berry is sharp and aromatic enough to carry a pie by itself. The 1900 newspaper recipe uses sugar, flour and butter and stops. Spice belongs on a pie made from bland fruit.

Can I use ordinary cultivated blueberries?

You can, and you should change two things. Highbush berries are bigger, wetter and sweeter, so raise the cornstarch to five tablespoons and drop the sugar to half a cup, and expect a milder pie. The state dessert as the law defines it is specifically "Blueberry pie, made with wild Maine blueberries", and the difference is easy to taste side by side.

Is it true the barrens are burned every other year?

Partly. The two-year cycle is real: each field is pruned to the ground after harvest and cropped the following year, so growers work half their acreage at a time. But UMaine Extension's Bulletin #2096 is blunt that most fields are now mowed rather than burned, that flail mowing took over from the 1980s, and that burning survives mainly with organic growers who use fire as a pest control. The photographs of flaming barrens are true pictures of a minority practice.