[Sca-cooks] help with a pie

[Devra at aol.com]

Help! A number of period recipes call for a pie to be partly cooked, and  
then a hole made in the crust and a 'lyre' of some kind of liquid poured in  
before the finishing cooking. I have a nice book ('Book of Old Tarts') that I  got 
on sale while in England, and have been trying a few recipes. One of them  
(raspberry cream tart) called for just such a process.
 
However - instead of the crust making a nice empty dome over the berries,  so 
that I could pour in the cream, it sank down onto the fruit, and I had no way 
 of getting it inside... I settled by making a lot of holes in the crust, and 
 having some of the cream on top of the crust, and... what did I do wrong? 
They  did not say to heap the berries up and balance the crust on that --would 
that  help? They did say to chill the crust -- is that an important step that I 
 ignored? The crust may not have sealed tightly, and may have had a small 
tear in  it -- would that make a big difference?
 
I've had crusts dome up on me when the filling was raw apples that cooked  
down, but this time I am stymied and frustrated. Pies are not my best thing  
anyway, so I'm using boughten crust...
 
Any advice? (Aside from --try a different dish...)
    Devra, pie-eyed