April 25, 2022 • 38 mins
The pie has been around for centuries, in both savory and sweet forms. But pies have been perceived and presented in a lot of different ways, and have even been an issue of deep contention.
Research:
- Tanglen, Randi. “A cultural history of pie.” The Madisonian. Nov. 24, 2020. https://www.madisoniannews.com/community/cultural-history-pie
- Anastolpoulo, Rossi. “Why Apple Pie Isn’t So American After All.” Food 52. October 8, 2021. https://food52.com/blog/24688-apple-pie-origin-story
- Siegel, Matt. “’Substantial, Satisfying, Hard to Digest.’ How Apple Pie is Like America.” Literary Hub. Sept. 1, 2021. https://lithub.com/substantial-satisfying-hard-to-digest-how-apple-pie-is-like-america/
- Snell, Rachel A. “ As North American as Pumpkin Pie: Cookbooks and the Development of National Cuisine in North America, 1796-1854.” Erudit. Oct. 7, 2014. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cuizine/2014-v5-n2-cuizine01533/1026771ar/
- “Pie.” New York Times. May 2, 1902. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/05/03/118469204.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- “A Shortcrust History of Pies.” BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zmtn2sg
- Simmons, Amelia. “American Cookery, or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preservesd, and All Kinds of Cakes, From the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake. Adapted to This Country, and All Grades of Life.” Hudson & Goodwin. 1796. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12815/pg12815.html
- Soyer, Alexis. “The Modern Housewife or, Menagere Comprising Nearly One Thousand Receipts, for the Economic and Judicious Preparation of Every Meal of the Day, with those of The Nursery and Sick Room, and Minute Directions for Family Management in All its Branches.” New York. D. Appleton & Co. 1850. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41899/41899-h/41899-h.htm
- Howland, E.A. “The American economical housekeeper, and family receipt book.” H.W. Derby. 1845. Accessed online: https://d.lib.msu.edu/fa/23#page/10/mode/2up
- “History of Pies.” What’s Cooking America. https://whatscookingamerica.net/history/piehistory.htm
- Hale, Sarah. “The ladies' new book of cookery : a practical system for private families in town and country; with directions for carving, and arranging the table for parties, etc. Also, preparations of food for invalids and for children.” 1852. Accessed online: https://d.lib.msu.edu/fa/48#page/2/mode/2up
- Masterson, Kate. “The Great American Pie.” New York Times. August 10, 1902. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/08/10/118475659.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- Simmons, Amelia. “American cookery, or, The art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables : and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves : and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plumb to plain cake, adapted to this country, and all grades of life.” Hudson & Goodwin. 1796. Accessed online: https://www.loc.gov/item/96126967/
- Traill, Catherine Parr Strickland. “The female emigrant's guide, and hints on Canadian housekeeping.” Maclear. 1854. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/cihm_41417/page/n11/mode/2up
- Kelly, Alison. “A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America.” Library of Congress Blof. Nov. 20, 2017. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2017/11/a-brief-history-of-pumpkin-pie-in-america/
- Clarkson, Janet. “Pie: A Global History.” Reaktion Books. 2009.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen. Who
doesn't love pie? I mean, I like a lot of
different pie. Well that's the beauty of it, right, there's
(00:23):
a lot of different kinds. I'm not dogging anybody that
doesn't like pie, but like you can get it's savory
or sweet, or biscuit topped or with a buttercrust. It
is one of those foods that has so much variety
that there is kind of something for everyone. That also
means though, that it's a massive topic. So before we
even go in as a level set, this is not
an exhaustive history of pie. We're just looking at some
(00:45):
pie stuff in history, is how I like to think
about it, because otherwise it would get really really it
would become an entire series about pie, which sounds fun,
but I think not that many people would actually want
to hear um. So we are going to cover today
the Bay Sick history of pie as we know it,
and then we'll delve into the way that pie became
a huge part of Western cooking, so much so that
(01:07):
it is deeply linked in many ways to national identity.
We're going to talk about a couple of the most
popular pies, how they have changed over time. And we're
also going to do one of my favorite things, which
is talked about a bunch of recipes from historical cookbooks
and kind of see how pies were perceived and presented
(01:27):
and taught as a thing to make at various points.
So you would like to grab a slice, get ready,
because we're going to jump right in. One of the
trickiest things about discussing the history of pie is nomenclature.
A lot of things have been called pie or pie
spelled p y e, and that takes place over centuries
(01:49):
of recorded history. A lot of it most people today
wouldn't even really recognize as pie. So as a food item,
there's no one species, a thick moment of origin that
will likely ever pinpoint. Yeah, there are a lot of
a lot of uh, surveys of pie history that you'll
read will comment that like, for a long time, if
(02:11):
it wasn't bread, it was pie like with which we
know it's not really indicative of the wide range of
baked goods you can make. In the book, pie. A
global history author Janet Clarkson suggests that the progression to
putting filling inside of a dough shell might have gone
like this. Someone first tried baking bread in a kiln
(02:33):
after noticing that dough and clay had some similarities in
their pre baked state. We've talked on the show before
about bread being baked like flat in a fire, and
that they transitioned over to this kiln approach. And they
also then started wrapping meat inside of leaves when they
cooked over an open flame to help retain the juices.
And then there was likely this moment where the experiment
(02:55):
was made to wrap the meat inside the dough to
retain juices, and a law that would have been primitive pie.
This seems like a pretty logical chain of events, So
in terms of like theorizing that this may have happened
this way makes all the sense on earth, but we
can't conclusively substantiate those moments of inspiration that led to
(03:15):
each of those steps. Yeah, it reminds me of when
we talked about the origins of cheese and how there's
a lot of maybe it could have worked that they
may have accidentally fermented cheese or on purpose, we don't know.
The first evidence we have of something that seems like
a pie comes from ancient Egypt. They started mixing up
(03:36):
honey based fillings to bake inside of a bread like
grain based cake the States as far back as six
thousand BC. There's also evidence of savory pie in Egypt
as far back as two thousand b C. There's a
recipe for a chicken pie was found on a tablet
(03:56):
that's been dated back to that time. By the time
of Ramps these the Seconds who ruled from thirteen oh
four to twelve thirty seven b c e, the combination
of honey with nuts and fruits baked into a bread
dough was popular. We know this because it was depicted
on the tomb walls of Ramsey's the Second and a
(04:17):
lot of the pies that we're talking about here are
kind of what we would call gallets, so they're relatively
free form. The crust is sort of wrapped up around
the sides uh to keep the food contents inside, but
it doesn't really look like a perfectly formed rounded pie.
In ancient Greece, there's mention of a pastry used as
(04:37):
a shell for other foods in the work of Aristophanes.
Aristophanes lived from four or forty six to three eighty
six BC, so we know by that time there were
pies of some sort there. There's also mentioned of the
job of pastry specialists. That was a vocation that was
different from Baker's, although the word pastry wouldn't be coined
(04:59):
until much later. This involved specializing in a mix of
flour and water to create a paste and then that
would be wrapped around the meat for cooking. So we
covered the oldest known cookbook, Diric Coquina on the show before,
and we mentioned that it had a number of savory
pies in it. And this Roman book, which is usually
(05:19):
dated to the first century, is full of recipes, and
because it's miscellaneous section is pretty heavy on pie instructions,
it's fairly clear that savory pies at least had become
standard at this point. We know that as the Romans
had conquered the Greek Peninsula, Greek and Roman culture blended
in a variety of ways, and it appears that pies
(05:40):
were part of that intermingling and adoption. And in Rome,
though the pies composition evolved, it considerably in terms of
the fillings, the crust, was still pretty basic up to
this point. The idea of a pie crust really had
more to do with it being a vessel than it
being edible. The idea was that it was a simple
(06:02):
way to contain the real goods, which was the filling,
not so much about the crust itself being eaten. The
pastry around the food was a cooking vessel, a carrying case,
and a way to keep the filling from going bad
too quickly. The proportion of ingredients was aimed at creating
a sturdy shell for all of these needs, not about
(06:23):
making that shell delicious. No, if you've ever had a
really hard and miserable bread, you know that it's not delicious,
And that's kind of kind of where we're at here.
But as a lot of things from the Roman Empire,
the idea of pie quickly spread throughout Europe and beyond.
So because of the ease of travel of a completely
self contained food, pie meat its way not only over
(06:46):
land but also on two ships. By the medieval period,
what we might recognize as a meat pie was being
made called bake meat. These were normally pies that had
an animal protein as the primary filling, and green and
so things like poultry, venison, pork, beef, lamb that was
pre cooked and either sliced up into small pieces or
(07:08):
ground or mashed into more of a paste. With the
other ingredients that was things like egg, honey, dates, and pepper.
And it's in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century
that the word pie starts to appear in written language,
specifically referring to a savory filling enclosed in a dough
or pastry. There is a distinction, by the way between
(07:30):
those two words. To be considered a pastry, there has
to be fat in the dough. And how the word
pie spelled as we mentioned earlier, early on with a
y as in p y e, came to be used
for this type of dishes not entirely certain. This is
another thing that has a pretty common theory but we
don't know, and that theory is that it borrows its
(07:50):
name from the bird, the magpie. So just as that
type of bird gathers various things to make a nest,
a cook or baker would gather what they had into
a crust to make a pie. Well before the thirteenth century,
the Arab world had developed pastry, so it seems likely
that as the Muslim Empire expanded in the six hundreds.
(08:12):
The idea of a more delicate and delicious type of
dough was encountered by other cultures that might have informed
the evolution of the pie crust. Meat pies have long
been part of Middle Eastern cooking, usually similar to the
galets that we mentioned earlier. You have never had a
Lebanese meat pie. You have not lived. Um, I'm thinking
(08:35):
about them now and just drooling. So these still, the
pies that we're talking about at this point in history
would not have been the kind of pies you think
of today. The crust was way more voluminous, still not
the buttery, flaky delight that we enjoy in modern times.
And this base crust also had the name of coffin.
This sounds perhaps surprising or disturbing, but becomes less so
(08:58):
when you consider that pie eyes were also not round
at this point. They were usually shaped like long, almost
squared off shapes, and the word coffin referred to a
box or basket long before it had any funereal associations. Basically,
people were making baking dishes out of dough and that
had to be able to sit in an oven for hours,
(09:20):
sometimes While it's possible that somebody may have nibbled at that,
it wasn't something that most people of any means would
actually eat. On occasion, the coffin crust would be used
as a vessel for making a second dish that took
advantage of the flavoring from the first baking. And there
are some indications and historical cooking instructions that the crust
(09:41):
would on occasion be broken up into small pieces and
added to things like stew as a thickener. It's like
they took advantage of its flower content like a third time.
Like you could bake your pie in it, then you
could bake another thing in it, like a super something
soft like that, and then you could break it all
down and grind it out in and make your stews
(10:02):
a little bit thicker in that way. Uh. During the
medieval period in Europe, pie became a means of expressing
wealth and creativity, and these pies would sometimes have a
live element. If you have heard the nursery rhymes sing
a song of sixpence, you probably recalled pretty quickly the
line about four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,
and those birds start to sing when the pie is
(10:24):
cut open. I remember being real freaked out by that
as a kid and wondering what the inside of the
pie looked like and how the birds had survived baking
because I was not bright enough to have done the
math on it. UH. Pies with an animated element did
become quite popular for a while, and of course that
living element was added after the crust was baked. Often
(10:45):
it was baked with a wooden shaper or scaffolding inside
so that the dough would retain its shape. Then the
animals and sometimes even people. Some of these pies were
enormous and allegedly contained entire orchestras. UH. Those items would
be placed inside before where the pie was revealed to
the dinner guests and then became part of their entertainment.
An Italian cookbook from titled Epulario describes how quote to
(11:11):
make pie that the birds maybe alive in them and
fly out when it is cut up. That wording delights me.
This recipe describes making a large pastry crust with a
hole in the bottom about the size of a fist.
To bake it, you fill it up with flour and
then pour the flour out. Once the crust is done, cooking.
(11:33):
To complete the process, you fill the pie from the
bottom with birds through that hole that you had made.
The recipe continues quote, and this is to be at
such time as you send the pie to the table
and set before the guests, where uncovering or cutting up
the lid of the great pie, all the birds will
(11:53):
fly out, which is delight and pleasure show to the company.
I still have questions about the hygiene of the whole situation,
but that's yeah. I wouldn't eat I mean, nobody would
be eating it. But my concern is even like having
a bird hopping around on your dinner table, not always
(12:14):
hi or any animal. I'm not anti bert. But aside
from making pies into living theater, cooks during the medieval
time would also work to create some incredibly lavish and
sometimes enormous pies. Very ambitious chefs would even create architectural
wonders with pie, building the exterior crusts into things like
castles or other decorative items. In a moment, we will
(12:38):
talk about fruit pies and the first known cherry pie,
but first we will pause for a sponsor break. As
we mentioned before the break, fruit pies also started to
appear in medieval Europe. In some cases these would have
(13:00):
been open faced without a top crust. That's what we
would call it tart today. Apple pie is referenced in
the writing of Chaucer. He actually provided the first known
apple pie recipe in one and that reads us follows, quote,
take good apples and good spices, and figs and raisins
and pairs, and when they are well brayed colored with saffron,
(13:20):
well and do it in a coffin, and do it
forth to bake. Well. I love it. I don't know
why I'm so charmed by that. In England's pie became
a thing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First,
and it said that the first cherry pie was made
for the Queen herself. We don't actually have a record
(13:42):
of what she thought of it, but the fruit pies
became more popular during Elizabeth the First rain they weren't
anywhere near as sweet as modern fruit pies. Sugar was
a luxury for the very wealthiest people, and most fruit pies,
even for people high on thes of the social ladder,
dependent on the natural sugar of the fruit to make
(14:04):
them sweet. Often dried fruits were used, and that would
have concentrated the flavor and back to savory pies at
the time. If you have ever read or seen the
play Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, you may recall that
pie becomes part of a grizzly revenge plot. The title
character has two brothers who had attacked his daughter Lavinia,
(14:26):
baked into a pie, which he then serves to their mother.
In the mid fift hundred's, the book A proper New
Book of Cookery was published and included all kinds of dishes.
You could get recipes for making preserves, stewing broth, preparing meats,
and of course, baking pies from it. The idea of
a tart a small pie was already established, and there
(14:49):
is a recipe for making crusts for them. It reads
as follows quote to make short paste for tart, take
fine flour and a cursey of fair water, and a
dish of sweet butter, and a little saffron, and the
yolks of two eggs, and make it thin and as
tender as you may. So. By this point we can
(15:09):
see that the crust was being made to be less
of a sturdy baking vessel and more a part of
the food itself. This treatment of the crust made thin
and tender sounds pretty good, not too far from a
pie crust recipe you would probably find today, although of
course there are no measurements in there. As an aside,
(15:30):
egg yolks may or may not show up in a
modern recipe. They make the dough a bit more pliable
and easier to work with than the dough made without
the egg. This is just making me remember all kinds
of episodes of the Great British Baking Show and various
times that they've made various older styles of pies with
(15:52):
various types of crust recipes. When European colonists moved to
North America, they of course brought their cooking tradition as well,
and that included pie. The methods of cooking evolved, of
course to work with the available foods of the continent,
but there was also a significant influence on pie and
all cooking and baking in the colonies from the rise
(16:15):
of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and then in the
southern parts of North America. There had been European run
sugar plantations in South America as early as the sixteenth century,
but as more Europeans moved across the Atlantic. Plantations on
Caribbean islands grew rapidly in number and in size, and
(16:35):
the Transatlantic slave trade enabled those plantations to produce lots
and lots of sugar, making what had been a luxury
item something that was pretty accessible to most people, and
that meant that fruit pies got a lot sweeter. By
the time the US gained its independence, the taste for
sugar was completely ingrained in the culture of its white
(16:56):
European descendant population. In seventeen nineties six, the first cookbook
in the United States came out. It was titled American Cookery,
Or the Art of Dressing Beyond Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables
and the Best Modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards,
and preserves, and all kinds of cakes from the imperial
(17:20):
plum to plain cake adapted to this country and all
grades of life. This offers insight into where the newly
founded country was in terms of pies, because you get
really a bit of everything, sweet savory pies with hard crusts,
pies with biscuit toppings, and pies with more familiar types
(17:41):
of crusts. The recipe for what the author, Amelia Simmons
calls a sea pie makes it apparent that this is
not a pie made with seafood, but one that is
meant to be carried onto a ship for a voyage,
and there are a lot of such see pies in
old cookbooks. This one includes a lot of food and
a lot of crust because it starts with four pounds
(18:03):
of flour. It reads quote four pounds of flour, one
and half pound of butter, rolled into paste, wet with
cold water. Line the pot therewith lay in split pigeons,
turkey pies, veal, mutton, or birds, with slices of pork, salt, pepper,
and dust on flour, doing thus till the pot is full,
(18:24):
or your ingredients expended. Add three pints of water, cover
tight with paste, and stew moderately two and a half hours.
That sounds so huge. It does sound enormous. Simmons offers
up two versions of apple pie, and her book. We'll
see in a moment that some cookbooks started giving what
they called English and American versions of pies. But in
(18:47):
this case the differentiator is that one gets some extra
ingredients and a very savory one let's added after it
cooks for a little while. Both of these have sugar
as an ingredient, so it's apparent that this was a
commonplace ingredient while baking at this point. Here is the
basic recipe for apple pie as given by Simmons. Stew
(19:07):
and strain the apples to every three points, grate the
peel of a fresh lemon, Add cinnamon, mace, rose, water,
and sugar to your taste, and bake in paste number three.
Every species of fruit such as peas, plums, raspberries, blackberries,
may be only sweetened without spices, and bake in paste
number three. That paste number three that's mentioned is dough. Oddly,
(19:33):
the way the cookbook is organized, the dough recipes come
after the pie recipes. But here's how paste number three
is made. Quote to any quantity of flour, rub in
three fourths of its weight in butter twelve eggs, so
a peck, rub in one third or half, and roll
in the rest. But the other apple pie that Amelia
(19:54):
Simmons included has an extra ingredient, and that is more butter,
and it goes into the pie after it's cooked for
a while. This recipe is simply titled a buttered apple pie.
And these are the instructions. Pair quarter and core tart apples,
lay in paste number three, cover with the same bake
(20:15):
half an hour. When drawn gently, raise the top crust,
Add sugar, butter, cinnamon, mace, wine or rosewater. There's also
a note in American Cookery within the section on pies
that reads quote observations all meat pies require a hotter
and brisker oven than fruit pies, and good cookeries, all
(20:36):
raisins should be stoned. As people differ in their tastes,
they may alter to their wishes, and as it is
difficult to ascertain with precision these small articles of spicery,
everyone may relish as they like and suit their taste.
I do love that, because I am that person that's
like experiment in the kitchen, and I that old cookbooks
(21:01):
were saying the same thing. In the first half of
the eighteen hundreds, Chef Alexei Benois Souier left France for
England and rose to prominence There is one of the
most popular chefs of his time. He is pretty fascinating
and will very likely be a future episode. Soyer wrote
a number of books, but in eighteen forty nine he
penned The Modern Housewife or Menager, comprising nearly one thousand
(21:25):
receipts for the economic and judicious preparation of every meal
of the day, with those of the nursery and sick room,
and minute directions for family management in all its branches.
And this book was intended as a guide primarily for
women running households to create dishes as delicious as those
that would be served in fine restaurants, and to do
(21:46):
so on a budget. And one of the ways that
the chefs suggests economizing is by using leftovers to make
hash or to be included in pies. He also has
a lot of recipes for pies, and he was not
the least bit shy about shifting away from the crust
as baking dish approach. Moving over to pie, Tens writing quote,
(22:07):
having found a great difficulty in raising the crust for
a pie with my hands, I purchased for a trifle
a tin pie mold, by the use of which the
process is more simple, and the pie retains its shape
whilst baking and secures the gravy much better. He gives
a recipe in his book for hot lam pie which
outlines his method for making pie crust. Quote put a
(22:31):
quarter of a pound of butter and the same of
chopped suet into a stew pan with half a pint
of water, and let the whole boiled together one minute.
Then strain it through a sieve into a basin containing
two pounds of flour, mixing it first with a spoon
and when cool enough, with the hand until forming a
smooth paste. He then directs the home cook to layer
(22:52):
small cuts of meat with potatoes, onions, parsley, and seasoning
into the crust, which is inside a dish, covering with
the remaining crusted paste, and baking for two or more hours.
The soy pie is drained of fat before serving, and
then gravy is at him. He has many many savory
pies in his book, including those for mutton, chicken, grouse, partridge,
(23:15):
and eel. We mentioned a moment ago that fruit pies
had already become popular in England well before the North
American colonies were founded, and apple pie has become something
of a national identity dish for the United States, even
though it's really just a much sweeter version of the
ones that were made in England during colonization, and as
(23:36):
we mentioned, earlier Chaucer had an apple pie recipe. Apple
pie also had to be seated around North America. Uh
so it really might have been a lot more fitting
to have made pumpkin pie the emblem of baking in
the United States. In eighteen fifty two, Sarah J. Hale
published The Ladies New Book of Cookery, and within it
(23:59):
she two different versions of pumpkin pie, one made the
American way and one made the English way. She did
the same thing for apple pie, but the two of
those are very very similar. The main difference is the
inclusion of clove and nutmeg in the English version, but
pumpkin pie was a different story with two very different preparations.
(24:20):
The English way is pretty simple. Quote take out the
seeds and grate the pumpkin to you come to the outside. Skin,
sweeten the pulp, add a little ground allspice, lemon peel,
and lemon juice. In short, flavor it to the taste.
Bake without an upper crust. So if you live in
the United States, and if you have ever made a
pumpkin pie from scratch, or if you've eaten a pumpkin pie,
(24:42):
this may sound a little bit odd to you because
it would not produce that smooth, textured, relatively homogeneous, and
custard like filling that any of us would normally see
on a pie on a holiday like Thanksgiving. Yeah, it
reminds me more of a dish that my grandmother made
called sweet potato pudding that used graded sweet potato delicious,
(25:03):
extremely good. Yes, the American pumpkin pie recipe that Hail
included is a lot more involved. It begins quotes, take
out the seed and pair the pumpkin or squash. But
in taking out the seeds, do not scrape the inside
of the pumpkin. The part nearest the seed is the sweetest.
Then stew the pumpkin and strain it through a sieve
(25:24):
of colander to a quart of milk. For a family pie,
three eggs are sufficient. Stir in the stewed pumpkin with
your milk and beaten up eggs till it is as
thick as you can stir around rapidly and easily. There's
also a little aside in this recipe about how you
can make your pumpkin pie richer by adding sweet cream
(25:45):
or more eggs, and then quote sweetened with molasses or sugar,
add two tea spoons of salt, two tablespoons of sifted cinnamon,
and one of powdered ginger, but all spice may be used,
or any other spice that may be preferred. The peel
of a lemon grated in gives it a pleasant flavor.
The more eggs, says an American authority, the better the pie.
(26:07):
Bake about an hour in deep plates or shallow dishes
without an upper crust, in a hot oven. This is
a good illustration of how recipes can change and adapt.
Most food historians agree that the pumpkin pie first came
about when colonists were just trying to make do with
what they had in North America, and pumpkins are native
to North America. This is why the English recipe, which
(26:29):
probably made its way back across the Atlantic and was
adopted there, is closer to the way you would make
an apple pie. Incidentally, Hale writes of making pie crust,
though she uses the term paste, and she makes it
clear that its success or failure is entirely dependent on
the skill of the person preparing it. She writes, quote,
the art of making paste requires a good memory, practice,
(26:52):
and dexterity, for it is principally from the method of
mixing the various ingredients of which it is composed, that
paste acquires good or bad qualities. We're going to talk
more about pumpkin pie in a moment after we hear
from the sponsors who keep stuffy miss in history class going.
(27:18):
In eighteen fifty four, just two years after The Ladies
New Book of Cookery was published, English Canadian author Catherine
Parr Strickland Trail published a book titled The Female Emigrants
Guide and Hints on Canadian Housekeeping, and Trail too had
a recipe for pumpkin pie. She gives a lot more
detail and instruction regarding how to prepare the dish, specifically
(27:41):
the cooking of the pumpkin. It goes quote, select a
good sweet pumpkin, fully ripe, to ascertain if it be
a sweet one, For there is a great difference in
this respect. Cut a piece of the rhine and taste it,
or cut several and then you can judge which is best.
The sweetest pumpkins require less sugar and are much richer.
Then it continues pare and cut the fruit into slices,
(28:04):
removing the seeds and also the fibrous spongey part next
to the seeds, cut it into small pieces, and put
it on the fire with about a pint of water
covering the pot close. You are not to bruise or
stir it. Should the water boil away so as to
endanger the pumpkin burning to the bottom of the pot.
A small quantity more of water maybe added. It will
(28:26):
take three or four hours to boil, quite soft and
of a fine brownish yellow. Some improve the color and
richness by setting the pot on a few embers near
the fire and keeping the pot turned as the pulp
browns at the sides, but this requires to be carefully
attended to. The pumpkin pie lovers among our listeners will
(28:46):
probably agree with the following sentiment from Trail, although your
mileage may vary on the second part of this quote. Quote.
A finer dish than a good pumpkin pie can hardly
be eaten, and it is within the power of any
poor man's family to enjoy this luxury. If you do
not grow this fruit, any neighbor will give you one
for the asking. I just want to go to a
(29:09):
neighbor now, I'd be like, do you have a pumpkin?
I watched them go. What is wrong with you? However,
though pie, both apple, and pumpkin have been much belowed
for decades here in the United States, there has also
been a push and pull regarding its close ties to
the nation's identity, and at the turn of the twentieth century,
pies popularity had dropped off, but there was a very
(29:30):
vocal group of supporters who really wanted pie to be
elevated and recognized as an important part of US history.
Others did not, so To illustrate this argument that was
going on, the following two examples are articles that both
appeared in The New York Times in the same year
nineteen o two, just a few months apart, and the
(29:50):
first one is very pro pie. So on May third, two,
the New York Times printed a short column extolling the
virtues of pie. It's a little rara nationalism. It's obviously
written from a white Eurocentric point of view, but it
also offers a look at how the idea of pie
had become deeply entwined with the national identity of the
(30:11):
United States. It read, in part quote, pie is the
food of the heroic. No pie eating people can ever
be permanently vanquished. It is a significant historical fact that
England's glory was greatest in the days when her gallant
Son's eight pie. Then slowly the pernicious influence of the
shopkeeping element grew, and gradually the dimensions of the pie
(30:35):
were reduced, until now it has dwindled to the insignificant tart.
As the pie declined, the high ideals were lowered in
the prestige and power of Great Britain were dissipated. True,
there are doctors who preach against the pie habit, but
no one has ever known a doctor to refuse a
second piece of pie, just a brilliant pilo there. Then,
(30:58):
on August ten, in a magazine section of the New
York Times, they ran a piece titled The Great American Pie,
and it's author, Kate Masterson, had some very strong feelings
about pie. They were not positive. Masterson wrote, quote, pie
is really an American evil, one from which is a
nation we are now happily emerging. Pie, placed where it
(31:21):
belongs in the list of desserts, is lacking in all
the elements that should go to make it desirable. The
criticisms that follow include the opinion that the pie is
lacking in delicacy and sophistication. It is not as elegant
as plain fruit, and that it is quote too ornate
and pretentious. But Kate was just getting started, because then
(31:42):
she writes that pie is one of the quote un
moral foods, which she defines as quote those possessing admittedly
injurious qualities. Not only are the various health problems of
pie mentioned, notably dyspepsia, but there's also the hint that
pie eating will cause pe addiction. This is followed by
(32:02):
a rather firm assertion that quote the hardened pie eater
becomes art blind. Nothing makes him glow or warms him
to any enthusiasm but his chosen food. No great man
was ever fond of pie. I did not know how
vehement the pie fight had been in the U turn
(32:24):
of the twentieth century. This all sort of tickled me um.
But as more women started entering the workforce, the popularity
of pie did continue to drop off because fewer people
just had time to bake, and particularly to do anything
that involved a lot of steps. But post World War Two,
as convenience foods became popular, things like pre made pie
crusts and easy recipes that were made with things like
(32:46):
pudding mixed kind of reinvigorated interest in baking pies, but
as this interest continued into the second half of the
twentieth century in the US, the popularity of those more
traditional and more involved recipes once again rose. While the
pie as we know it today is really a largely
Western food, As missionaries and other travelers have moved throughout
(33:08):
the world and introduced the concept of other places, other
cultures have developed their own unique and delicious pies. A
coconut pie called buco pie is popular in the Philippines,
and Australia has a delicious savory pie tradition going back
to its roots in England. In Samoa, a sweet pie
made with coconut and pineapple that resembles an impanata is
(33:32):
called a pie fala and is very popular. And Jamaica
has a handheld meat pie called a beef Patty that
uses turmeric in the crust. So pie has become the
ultimate kitchen improv item because you can put whatever you
want inside of a crust um just because I think
folks may right to ask about it. As you were
(33:53):
working on this, did you find anything about that article
that went viral a couple of years ago about how
pumpkin pie was like greatly an abolitionist dish um, Yes,
And I didn't include it because there's a lot of
argument and not a lot of actual stuff to back
(34:14):
it up. We can talk about it more on Friday.
I was just one of those things where I was like,
I bet if we don't say this, we're going to
get a flood of email from people being like, how
did you not mention this article? Yeah, I mean it's um,
that's a big theoretical. People are free to discuss and debate,
but like I said, there's not a lot to like
(34:34):
really back it up. It was kind of going on
as we were like, let's make everything as sweet as
sweet possible. Yeah. It was one of those things that
a lot of aspects of it felt really circumstantial to me,
but uh then you know, who knows. Anyway, I just
thought i'd check do you have listener mail? I do,
(34:55):
And this listener mail made me chuckle and offers up
uh an opportunity to talk about a thing that I'm
in love with. It's from our listener, Emily, who writes
high Holly and Tracy, I hope you're both doing well.
Thanks as always for the hours of learning and entertainment
you both work so hard to provide. There is a
show on HBO Max called Our Flag Means Death that
you may have heard about heard about. I'm devoted to it.
(35:17):
It stars Psycho at Rees, Darby, Leslie Jones, and a
ton of other hilarious people. It's about the life of
Steed Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate. I only knew about Bonnet
from your show, and when I thought about asking you
to rerun it as a Saturday Classic, I checked my
feet and saw you did. In side note, it feels
like you started classics a year or two ago, and
seeing that it was nearly four years ago was jarring
(35:38):
to me too. Uh, since it has been so long,
I thought I might suggest it again, giving his little
blip in pop culture. Now. Our Flag Means Death is
funny and profane, not for young listeners, but I highly
recommend it if you need to laugh anyway, Thanks again
for all of your work, Emily. Are you watching this show, Tracy,
I'm like four or five episodes into it got him
in love with it. Yeah, it's funny because I've had
(36:02):
a couple of friends go but it's not historically accurate, right,
And I'm like oh no. But part of what makes
it so rich is that it explores there's that element
of the Steed Bonnet and black Beard story where Blackbeard
took command of his ship of Steve Bonnets ship, and
that there question marks around how that was arrived at
(36:23):
and it didn't seem like it was ever. You know,
some people are like, no, he surely must have vanquished
him and taken him hostage, but there's no real evidence
of that, and there does appear that that Steve Bonnet
may have been willing to just be like, no, you
can have it, which opens up this very very rich
space to explore. And that's why I just think it's
(36:44):
a fun, really smart way to examine what what that
relationship could have been. Obviously not historically accurate to the
best of our knowledge, but wow is it fun. Yeah.
Leslie Jones for days. I love her on that show
so much. Um and I It's one of those things
too that I think sometimes people think if you uh
(37:06):
study history or talk about history for a living like
we do, like we would not be down with fictionalized history.
Could not be further from the Yeah, Honestly, I would
rather see something really creative that just plays around with
things than like totally factual, like you feel like you're
(37:33):
gonna hear a beep and it will get right. Yeah.
I also feel like he doesn't get mentioned nearly enough.
But the person who created that show is actually David Jenkins.
Sometimes tycho A t T gets credit for having created it,
and I understand he's a very creative and fascinating person.
I love pretty much everything he's ever touched, but m
(37:54):
David Jenkins gets all of the and that cast is spectacular. Um. Yes,
if you haven't watched it and you're down with some
profanity and some very very silly things, it's a very
fun one. Highly recommend it. Uh. If you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
(38:17):
us on social media pretty much everywhere as Missed in History,
and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeart
radio app or wherever it is you listen to your
favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i
heeart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(38:39):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen. Who
doesn't love pie? I mean, I like a lot of
different pie. Well that's the beauty of it, right, there's
(00:23):
a lot of different kinds. I'm not dogging anybody that
doesn't like pie, but like you can get it's savory
or sweet, or biscuit topped or with a buttercrust. It
is one of those foods that has so much variety
that there is kind of something for everyone. That also
means though, that it's a massive topic. So before we
even go in as a level set, this is not
an exhaustive history of pie. We're just looking at some
(00:45):
pie stuff in history, is how I like to think
about it, because otherwise it would get really really it
would become an entire series about pie, which sounds fun,
but I think not that many people would actually want
to hear um. So we are going to cover today
the Bay Sick history of pie as we know it,
and then we'll delve into the way that pie became
a huge part of Western cooking, so much so that
(01:07):
it is deeply linked in many ways to national identity.
We're going to talk about a couple of the most
popular pies, how they have changed over time. And we're
also going to do one of my favorite things, which
is talked about a bunch of recipes from historical cookbooks
and kind of see how pies were perceived and presented
(01:27):
and taught as a thing to make at various points.
So you would like to grab a slice, get ready,
because we're going to jump right in. One of the
trickiest things about discussing the history of pie is nomenclature.
A lot of things have been called pie or pie
spelled p y e, and that takes place over centuries
(01:49):
of recorded history. A lot of it most people today
wouldn't even really recognize as pie. So as a food item,
there's no one species, a thick moment of origin that
will likely ever pinpoint. Yeah, there are a lot of
a lot of uh, surveys of pie history that you'll
read will comment that like, for a long time, if
(02:11):
it wasn't bread, it was pie like with which we
know it's not really indicative of the wide range of
baked goods you can make. In the book, pie. A
global history author Janet Clarkson suggests that the progression to
putting filling inside of a dough shell might have gone
like this. Someone first tried baking bread in a kiln
(02:33):
after noticing that dough and clay had some similarities in
their pre baked state. We've talked on the show before
about bread being baked like flat in a fire, and
that they transitioned over to this kiln approach. And they
also then started wrapping meat inside of leaves when they
cooked over an open flame to help retain the juices.
And then there was likely this moment where the experiment
(02:55):
was made to wrap the meat inside the dough to
retain juices, and a law that would have been primitive pie.
This seems like a pretty logical chain of events, So
in terms of like theorizing that this may have happened
this way makes all the sense on earth, but we
can't conclusively substantiate those moments of inspiration that led to
(03:15):
each of those steps. Yeah, it reminds me of when
we talked about the origins of cheese and how there's
a lot of maybe it could have worked that they
may have accidentally fermented cheese or on purpose, we don't know.
The first evidence we have of something that seems like
a pie comes from ancient Egypt. They started mixing up
(03:36):
honey based fillings to bake inside of a bread like
grain based cake the States as far back as six
thousand BC. There's also evidence of savory pie in Egypt
as far back as two thousand b C. There's a
recipe for a chicken pie was found on a tablet
(03:56):
that's been dated back to that time. By the time
of Ramps these the Seconds who ruled from thirteen oh
four to twelve thirty seven b c e, the combination
of honey with nuts and fruits baked into a bread
dough was popular. We know this because it was depicted
on the tomb walls of Ramsey's the Second and a
(04:17):
lot of the pies that we're talking about here are
kind of what we would call gallets, so they're relatively
free form. The crust is sort of wrapped up around
the sides uh to keep the food contents inside, but
it doesn't really look like a perfectly formed rounded pie.
In ancient Greece, there's mention of a pastry used as
(04:37):
a shell for other foods in the work of Aristophanes.
Aristophanes lived from four or forty six to three eighty
six BC, so we know by that time there were
pies of some sort there. There's also mentioned of the
job of pastry specialists. That was a vocation that was
different from Baker's, although the word pastry wouldn't be coined
(04:59):
until much later. This involved specializing in a mix of
flour and water to create a paste and then that
would be wrapped around the meat for cooking. So we
covered the oldest known cookbook, Diric Coquina on the show before,
and we mentioned that it had a number of savory
pies in it. And this Roman book, which is usually
(05:19):
dated to the first century, is full of recipes, and
because it's miscellaneous section is pretty heavy on pie instructions,
it's fairly clear that savory pies at least had become
standard at this point. We know that as the Romans
had conquered the Greek Peninsula, Greek and Roman culture blended
in a variety of ways, and it appears that pies
(05:40):
were part of that intermingling and adoption. And in Rome,
though the pies composition evolved, it considerably in terms of
the fillings, the crust, was still pretty basic up to
this point. The idea of a pie crust really had
more to do with it being a vessel than it
being edible. The idea was that it was a simple
(06:02):
way to contain the real goods, which was the filling,
not so much about the crust itself being eaten. The
pastry around the food was a cooking vessel, a carrying case,
and a way to keep the filling from going bad
too quickly. The proportion of ingredients was aimed at creating
a sturdy shell for all of these needs, not about
(06:23):
making that shell delicious. No, if you've ever had a
really hard and miserable bread, you know that it's not delicious,
And that's kind of kind of where we're at here.
But as a lot of things from the Roman Empire,
the idea of pie quickly spread throughout Europe and beyond.
So because of the ease of travel of a completely
self contained food, pie meat its way not only over
(06:46):
land but also on two ships. By the medieval period,
what we might recognize as a meat pie was being
made called bake meat. These were normally pies that had
an animal protein as the primary filling, and green and
so things like poultry, venison, pork, beef, lamb that was
pre cooked and either sliced up into small pieces or
(07:08):
ground or mashed into more of a paste. With the
other ingredients that was things like egg, honey, dates, and pepper.
And it's in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century
that the word pie starts to appear in written language,
specifically referring to a savory filling enclosed in a dough
or pastry. There is a distinction, by the way between
(07:30):
those two words. To be considered a pastry, there has
to be fat in the dough. And how the word
pie spelled as we mentioned earlier, early on with a
y as in p y e, came to be used
for this type of dishes not entirely certain. This is
another thing that has a pretty common theory but we
don't know, and that theory is that it borrows its
(07:50):
name from the bird, the magpie. So just as that
type of bird gathers various things to make a nest,
a cook or baker would gather what they had into
a crust to make a pie. Well before the thirteenth century,
the Arab world had developed pastry, so it seems likely
that as the Muslim Empire expanded in the six hundreds.
(08:12):
The idea of a more delicate and delicious type of
dough was encountered by other cultures that might have informed
the evolution of the pie crust. Meat pies have long
been part of Middle Eastern cooking, usually similar to the
galets that we mentioned earlier. You have never had a
Lebanese meat pie. You have not lived. Um, I'm thinking
(08:35):
about them now and just drooling. So these still, the
pies that we're talking about at this point in history
would not have been the kind of pies you think
of today. The crust was way more voluminous, still not
the buttery, flaky delight that we enjoy in modern times.
And this base crust also had the name of coffin.
This sounds perhaps surprising or disturbing, but becomes less so
(08:58):
when you consider that pie eyes were also not round
at this point. They were usually shaped like long, almost
squared off shapes, and the word coffin referred to a
box or basket long before it had any funereal associations. Basically,
people were making baking dishes out of dough and that
had to be able to sit in an oven for hours,
(09:20):
sometimes While it's possible that somebody may have nibbled at that,
it wasn't something that most people of any means would
actually eat. On occasion, the coffin crust would be used
as a vessel for making a second dish that took
advantage of the flavoring from the first baking. And there
are some indications and historical cooking instructions that the crust
(09:41):
would on occasion be broken up into small pieces and
added to things like stew as a thickener. It's like
they took advantage of its flower content like a third time.
Like you could bake your pie in it, then you
could bake another thing in it, like a super something
soft like that, and then you could break it all
down and grind it out in and make your stews
(10:02):
a little bit thicker in that way. Uh. During the
medieval period in Europe, pie became a means of expressing
wealth and creativity, and these pies would sometimes have a
live element. If you have heard the nursery rhymes sing
a song of sixpence, you probably recalled pretty quickly the
line about four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,
and those birds start to sing when the pie is
(10:24):
cut open. I remember being real freaked out by that
as a kid and wondering what the inside of the
pie looked like and how the birds had survived baking
because I was not bright enough to have done the
math on it. UH. Pies with an animated element did
become quite popular for a while, and of course that
living element was added after the crust was baked. Often
(10:45):
it was baked with a wooden shaper or scaffolding inside
so that the dough would retain its shape. Then the
animals and sometimes even people. Some of these pies were
enormous and allegedly contained entire orchestras. UH. Those items would
be placed inside before where the pie was revealed to
the dinner guests and then became part of their entertainment.
An Italian cookbook from titled Epulario describes how quote to
(11:11):
make pie that the birds maybe alive in them and
fly out when it is cut up. That wording delights me.
This recipe describes making a large pastry crust with a
hole in the bottom about the size of a fist.
To bake it, you fill it up with flour and
then pour the flour out. Once the crust is done, cooking.
(11:33):
To complete the process, you fill the pie from the
bottom with birds through that hole that you had made.
The recipe continues quote, and this is to be at
such time as you send the pie to the table
and set before the guests, where uncovering or cutting up
the lid of the great pie, all the birds will
(11:53):
fly out, which is delight and pleasure show to the company.
I still have questions about the hygiene of the whole situation,
but that's yeah. I wouldn't eat I mean, nobody would
be eating it. But my concern is even like having
a bird hopping around on your dinner table, not always
(12:14):
hi or any animal. I'm not anti bert. But aside
from making pies into living theater, cooks during the medieval
time would also work to create some incredibly lavish and
sometimes enormous pies. Very ambitious chefs would even create architectural
wonders with pie, building the exterior crusts into things like
castles or other decorative items. In a moment, we will
(12:38):
talk about fruit pies and the first known cherry pie,
but first we will pause for a sponsor break. As
we mentioned before the break, fruit pies also started to
appear in medieval Europe. In some cases these would have
(13:00):
been open faced without a top crust. That's what we
would call it tart today. Apple pie is referenced in
the writing of Chaucer. He actually provided the first known
apple pie recipe in one and that reads us follows, quote,
take good apples and good spices, and figs and raisins
and pairs, and when they are well brayed colored with saffron,
(13:20):
well and do it in a coffin, and do it
forth to bake. Well. I love it. I don't know
why I'm so charmed by that. In England's pie became
a thing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First,
and it said that the first cherry pie was made
for the Queen herself. We don't actually have a record
(13:42):
of what she thought of it, but the fruit pies
became more popular during Elizabeth the First rain they weren't
anywhere near as sweet as modern fruit pies. Sugar was
a luxury for the very wealthiest people, and most fruit pies,
even for people high on thes of the social ladder,
dependent on the natural sugar of the fruit to make
(14:04):
them sweet. Often dried fruits were used, and that would
have concentrated the flavor and back to savory pies at
the time. If you have ever read or seen the
play Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, you may recall that
pie becomes part of a grizzly revenge plot. The title
character has two brothers who had attacked his daughter Lavinia,
(14:26):
baked into a pie, which he then serves to their mother.
In the mid fift hundred's, the book A proper New
Book of Cookery was published and included all kinds of dishes.
You could get recipes for making preserves, stewing broth, preparing meats,
and of course, baking pies from it. The idea of
a tart a small pie was already established, and there
(14:49):
is a recipe for making crusts for them. It reads
as follows quote to make short paste for tart, take
fine flour and a cursey of fair water, and a
dish of sweet butter, and a little saffron, and the
yolks of two eggs, and make it thin and as
tender as you may. So. By this point we can
(15:09):
see that the crust was being made to be less
of a sturdy baking vessel and more a part of
the food itself. This treatment of the crust made thin
and tender sounds pretty good, not too far from a
pie crust recipe you would probably find today, although of
course there are no measurements in there. As an aside,
(15:30):
egg yolks may or may not show up in a
modern recipe. They make the dough a bit more pliable
and easier to work with than the dough made without
the egg. This is just making me remember all kinds
of episodes of the Great British Baking Show and various
times that they've made various older styles of pies with
(15:52):
various types of crust recipes. When European colonists moved to
North America, they of course brought their cooking tradition as well,
and that included pie. The methods of cooking evolved, of
course to work with the available foods of the continent,
but there was also a significant influence on pie and
all cooking and baking in the colonies from the rise
(16:15):
of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and then in the
southern parts of North America. There had been European run
sugar plantations in South America as early as the sixteenth century,
but as more Europeans moved across the Atlantic. Plantations on
Caribbean islands grew rapidly in number and in size, and
(16:35):
the Transatlantic slave trade enabled those plantations to produce lots
and lots of sugar, making what had been a luxury
item something that was pretty accessible to most people, and
that meant that fruit pies got a lot sweeter. By
the time the US gained its independence, the taste for
sugar was completely ingrained in the culture of its white
(16:56):
European descendant population. In seventeen nineties six, the first cookbook
in the United States came out. It was titled American Cookery,
Or the Art of Dressing Beyond Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables
and the Best Modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards,
and preserves, and all kinds of cakes from the imperial
(17:20):
plum to plain cake adapted to this country and all
grades of life. This offers insight into where the newly
founded country was in terms of pies, because you get
really a bit of everything, sweet savory pies with hard crusts,
pies with biscuit toppings, and pies with more familiar types
(17:41):
of crusts. The recipe for what the author, Amelia Simmons
calls a sea pie makes it apparent that this is
not a pie made with seafood, but one that is
meant to be carried onto a ship for a voyage,
and there are a lot of such see pies in
old cookbooks. This one includes a lot of food and
a lot of crust because it starts with four pounds
(18:03):
of flour. It reads quote four pounds of flour, one
and half pound of butter, rolled into paste, wet with
cold water. Line the pot therewith lay in split pigeons,
turkey pies, veal, mutton, or birds, with slices of pork, salt, pepper,
and dust on flour, doing thus till the pot is full,
(18:24):
or your ingredients expended. Add three pints of water, cover
tight with paste, and stew moderately two and a half hours.
That sounds so huge. It does sound enormous. Simmons offers
up two versions of apple pie, and her book. We'll
see in a moment that some cookbooks started giving what
they called English and American versions of pies. But in
(18:47):
this case the differentiator is that one gets some extra
ingredients and a very savory one let's added after it
cooks for a little while. Both of these have sugar
as an ingredient, so it's apparent that this was a
commonplace ingredient while baking at this point. Here is the
basic recipe for apple pie as given by Simmons. Stew
(19:07):
and strain the apples to every three points, grate the
peel of a fresh lemon, Add cinnamon, mace, rose, water,
and sugar to your taste, and bake in paste number three.
Every species of fruit such as peas, plums, raspberries, blackberries,
may be only sweetened without spices, and bake in paste
number three. That paste number three that's mentioned is dough. Oddly,
(19:33):
the way the cookbook is organized, the dough recipes come
after the pie recipes. But here's how paste number three
is made. Quote to any quantity of flour, rub in
three fourths of its weight in butter twelve eggs, so
a peck, rub in one third or half, and roll
in the rest. But the other apple pie that Amelia
(19:54):
Simmons included has an extra ingredient, and that is more butter,
and it goes into the pie after it's cooked for
a while. This recipe is simply titled a buttered apple pie.
And these are the instructions. Pair quarter and core tart apples,
lay in paste number three, cover with the same bake
(20:15):
half an hour. When drawn gently, raise the top crust,
Add sugar, butter, cinnamon, mace, wine or rosewater. There's also
a note in American Cookery within the section on pies
that reads quote observations all meat pies require a hotter
and brisker oven than fruit pies, and good cookeries, all
(20:36):
raisins should be stoned. As people differ in their tastes,
they may alter to their wishes, and as it is
difficult to ascertain with precision these small articles of spicery,
everyone may relish as they like and suit their taste.
I do love that, because I am that person that's
like experiment in the kitchen, and I that old cookbooks
(21:01):
were saying the same thing. In the first half of
the eighteen hundreds, Chef Alexei Benois Souier left France for
England and rose to prominence There is one of the
most popular chefs of his time. He is pretty fascinating
and will very likely be a future episode. Soyer wrote
a number of books, but in eighteen forty nine he
penned The Modern Housewife or Menager, comprising nearly one thousand
(21:25):
receipts for the economic and judicious preparation of every meal
of the day, with those of the nursery and sick room,
and minute directions for family management in all its branches.
And this book was intended as a guide primarily for
women running households to create dishes as delicious as those
that would be served in fine restaurants, and to do
(21:46):
so on a budget. And one of the ways that
the chefs suggests economizing is by using leftovers to make
hash or to be included in pies. He also has
a lot of recipes for pies, and he was not
the least bit shy about shifting away from the crust
as baking dish approach. Moving over to pie, Tens writing quote,
(22:07):
having found a great difficulty in raising the crust for
a pie with my hands, I purchased for a trifle
a tin pie mold, by the use of which the
process is more simple, and the pie retains its shape
whilst baking and secures the gravy much better. He gives
a recipe in his book for hot lam pie which
outlines his method for making pie crust. Quote put a
(22:31):
quarter of a pound of butter and the same of
chopped suet into a stew pan with half a pint
of water, and let the whole boiled together one minute.
Then strain it through a sieve into a basin containing
two pounds of flour, mixing it first with a spoon
and when cool enough, with the hand until forming a
smooth paste. He then directs the home cook to layer
(22:52):
small cuts of meat with potatoes, onions, parsley, and seasoning
into the crust, which is inside a dish, covering with
the remaining crusted paste, and baking for two or more hours.
The soy pie is drained of fat before serving, and
then gravy is at him. He has many many savory
pies in his book, including those for mutton, chicken, grouse, partridge,
(23:15):
and eel. We mentioned a moment ago that fruit pies
had already become popular in England well before the North
American colonies were founded, and apple pie has become something
of a national identity dish for the United States, even
though it's really just a much sweeter version of the
ones that were made in England during colonization, and as
(23:36):
we mentioned, earlier Chaucer had an apple pie recipe. Apple
pie also had to be seated around North America. Uh
so it really might have been a lot more fitting
to have made pumpkin pie the emblem of baking in
the United States. In eighteen fifty two, Sarah J. Hale
published The Ladies New Book of Cookery, and within it
(23:59):
she two different versions of pumpkin pie, one made the
American way and one made the English way. She did
the same thing for apple pie, but the two of
those are very very similar. The main difference is the
inclusion of clove and nutmeg in the English version, but
pumpkin pie was a different story with two very different preparations.
(24:20):
The English way is pretty simple. Quote take out the
seeds and grate the pumpkin to you come to the outside. Skin,
sweeten the pulp, add a little ground allspice, lemon peel,
and lemon juice. In short, flavor it to the taste.
Bake without an upper crust. So if you live in
the United States, and if you have ever made a
pumpkin pie from scratch, or if you've eaten a pumpkin pie,
(24:42):
this may sound a little bit odd to you because
it would not produce that smooth, textured, relatively homogeneous, and
custard like filling that any of us would normally see
on a pie on a holiday like Thanksgiving. Yeah, it
reminds me more of a dish that my grandmother made
called sweet potato pudding that used graded sweet potato delicious,
(25:03):
extremely good. Yes, the American pumpkin pie recipe that Hail
included is a lot more involved. It begins quotes, take
out the seed and pair the pumpkin or squash. But
in taking out the seeds, do not scrape the inside
of the pumpkin. The part nearest the seed is the sweetest.
Then stew the pumpkin and strain it through a sieve
(25:24):
of colander to a quart of milk. For a family pie,
three eggs are sufficient. Stir in the stewed pumpkin with
your milk and beaten up eggs till it is as
thick as you can stir around rapidly and easily. There's
also a little aside in this recipe about how you
can make your pumpkin pie richer by adding sweet cream
(25:45):
or more eggs, and then quote sweetened with molasses or sugar,
add two tea spoons of salt, two tablespoons of sifted cinnamon,
and one of powdered ginger, but all spice may be used,
or any other spice that may be preferred. The peel
of a lemon grated in gives it a pleasant flavor.
The more eggs, says an American authority, the better the pie.
(26:07):
Bake about an hour in deep plates or shallow dishes
without an upper crust, in a hot oven. This is
a good illustration of how recipes can change and adapt.
Most food historians agree that the pumpkin pie first came
about when colonists were just trying to make do with
what they had in North America, and pumpkins are native
to North America. This is why the English recipe, which
(26:29):
probably made its way back across the Atlantic and was
adopted there, is closer to the way you would make
an apple pie. Incidentally, Hale writes of making pie crust,
though she uses the term paste, and she makes it
clear that its success or failure is entirely dependent on
the skill of the person preparing it. She writes, quote,
the art of making paste requires a good memory, practice,
(26:52):
and dexterity, for it is principally from the method of
mixing the various ingredients of which it is composed, that
paste acquires good or bad qualities. We're going to talk
more about pumpkin pie in a moment after we hear
from the sponsors who keep stuffy miss in history class going.
(27:18):
In eighteen fifty four, just two years after The Ladies
New Book of Cookery was published, English Canadian author Catherine
Parr Strickland Trail published a book titled The Female Emigrants
Guide and Hints on Canadian Housekeeping, and Trail too had
a recipe for pumpkin pie. She gives a lot more
detail and instruction regarding how to prepare the dish, specifically
(27:41):
the cooking of the pumpkin. It goes quote, select a
good sweet pumpkin, fully ripe, to ascertain if it be
a sweet one, For there is a great difference in
this respect. Cut a piece of the rhine and taste it,
or cut several and then you can judge which is best.
The sweetest pumpkins require less sugar and are much richer.
Then it continues pare and cut the fruit into slices,
(28:04):
removing the seeds and also the fibrous spongey part next
to the seeds, cut it into small pieces, and put
it on the fire with about a pint of water
covering the pot close. You are not to bruise or
stir it. Should the water boil away so as to
endanger the pumpkin burning to the bottom of the pot.
A small quantity more of water maybe added. It will
(28:26):
take three or four hours to boil, quite soft and
of a fine brownish yellow. Some improve the color and
richness by setting the pot on a few embers near
the fire and keeping the pot turned as the pulp
browns at the sides, but this requires to be carefully
attended to. The pumpkin pie lovers among our listeners will
(28:46):
probably agree with the following sentiment from Trail, although your
mileage may vary on the second part of this quote. Quote.
A finer dish than a good pumpkin pie can hardly
be eaten, and it is within the power of any
poor man's family to enjoy this luxury. If you do
not grow this fruit, any neighbor will give you one
for the asking. I just want to go to a
(29:09):
neighbor now, I'd be like, do you have a pumpkin?
I watched them go. What is wrong with you? However,
though pie, both apple, and pumpkin have been much belowed
for decades here in the United States, there has also
been a push and pull regarding its close ties to
the nation's identity, and at the turn of the twentieth century,
pies popularity had dropped off, but there was a very
(29:30):
vocal group of supporters who really wanted pie to be
elevated and recognized as an important part of US history.
Others did not, so To illustrate this argument that was
going on, the following two examples are articles that both
appeared in The New York Times in the same year
nineteen o two, just a few months apart, and the
(29:50):
first one is very pro pie. So on May third, two,
the New York Times printed a short column extolling the
virtues of pie. It's a little rara nationalism. It's obviously
written from a white Eurocentric point of view, but it
also offers a look at how the idea of pie
had become deeply entwined with the national identity of the
(30:11):
United States. It read, in part quote, pie is the
food of the heroic. No pie eating people can ever
be permanently vanquished. It is a significant historical fact that
England's glory was greatest in the days when her gallant
Son's eight pie. Then slowly the pernicious influence of the
shopkeeping element grew, and gradually the dimensions of the pie
(30:35):
were reduced, until now it has dwindled to the insignificant tart.
As the pie declined, the high ideals were lowered in
the prestige and power of Great Britain were dissipated. True,
there are doctors who preach against the pie habit, but
no one has ever known a doctor to refuse a
second piece of pie, just a brilliant pilo there. Then,
(30:58):
on August ten, in a magazine section of the New
York Times, they ran a piece titled The Great American Pie,
and it's author, Kate Masterson, had some very strong feelings
about pie. They were not positive. Masterson wrote, quote, pie
is really an American evil, one from which is a
nation we are now happily emerging. Pie, placed where it
(31:21):
belongs in the list of desserts, is lacking in all
the elements that should go to make it desirable. The
criticisms that follow include the opinion that the pie is
lacking in delicacy and sophistication. It is not as elegant
as plain fruit, and that it is quote too ornate
and pretentious. But Kate was just getting started, because then
(31:42):
she writes that pie is one of the quote un
moral foods, which she defines as quote those possessing admittedly
injurious qualities. Not only are the various health problems of
pie mentioned, notably dyspepsia, but there's also the hint that
pie eating will cause pe addiction. This is followed by
(32:02):
a rather firm assertion that quote the hardened pie eater
becomes art blind. Nothing makes him glow or warms him
to any enthusiasm but his chosen food. No great man
was ever fond of pie. I did not know how
vehement the pie fight had been in the U turn
(32:24):
of the twentieth century. This all sort of tickled me um.
But as more women started entering the workforce, the popularity
of pie did continue to drop off because fewer people
just had time to bake, and particularly to do anything
that involved a lot of steps. But post World War Two,
as convenience foods became popular, things like pre made pie
crusts and easy recipes that were made with things like
(32:46):
pudding mixed kind of reinvigorated interest in baking pies, but
as this interest continued into the second half of the
twentieth century in the US, the popularity of those more
traditional and more involved recipes once again rose. While the
pie as we know it today is really a largely
Western food, As missionaries and other travelers have moved throughout
(33:08):
the world and introduced the concept of other places, other
cultures have developed their own unique and delicious pies. A
coconut pie called buco pie is popular in the Philippines,
and Australia has a delicious savory pie tradition going back
to its roots in England. In Samoa, a sweet pie
made with coconut and pineapple that resembles an impanata is
(33:32):
called a pie fala and is very popular. And Jamaica
has a handheld meat pie called a beef Patty that
uses turmeric in the crust. So pie has become the
ultimate kitchen improv item because you can put whatever you
want inside of a crust um just because I think
folks may right to ask about it. As you were
(33:53):
working on this, did you find anything about that article
that went viral a couple of years ago about how
pumpkin pie was like greatly an abolitionist dish um, Yes,
And I didn't include it because there's a lot of
argument and not a lot of actual stuff to back
(34:14):
it up. We can talk about it more on Friday.
I was just one of those things where I was like,
I bet if we don't say this, we're going to
get a flood of email from people being like, how
did you not mention this article? Yeah, I mean it's um,
that's a big theoretical. People are free to discuss and debate,
but like I said, there's not a lot to like
(34:34):
really back it up. It was kind of going on
as we were like, let's make everything as sweet as
sweet possible. Yeah. It was one of those things that
a lot of aspects of it felt really circumstantial to me,
but uh then you know, who knows. Anyway, I just
thought i'd check do you have listener mail? I do,
(34:55):
And this listener mail made me chuckle and offers up
uh an opportunity to talk about a thing that I'm
in love with. It's from our listener, Emily, who writes
high Holly and Tracy, I hope you're both doing well.
Thanks as always for the hours of learning and entertainment
you both work so hard to provide. There is a
show on HBO Max called Our Flag Means Death that
you may have heard about heard about. I'm devoted to it.
(35:17):
It stars Psycho at Rees, Darby, Leslie Jones, and a
ton of other hilarious people. It's about the life of
Steed Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate. I only knew about Bonnet
from your show, and when I thought about asking you
to rerun it as a Saturday Classic, I checked my
feet and saw you did. In side note, it feels
like you started classics a year or two ago, and
seeing that it was nearly four years ago was jarring
(35:38):
to me too. Uh, since it has been so long,
I thought I might suggest it again, giving his little
blip in pop culture. Now. Our Flag Means Death is
funny and profane, not for young listeners, but I highly
recommend it if you need to laugh anyway, Thanks again
for all of your work, Emily. Are you watching this show, Tracy,
I'm like four or five episodes into it got him
in love with it. Yeah, it's funny because I've had
(36:02):
a couple of friends go but it's not historically accurate, right,
And I'm like oh no. But part of what makes
it so rich is that it explores there's that element
of the Steed Bonnet and black Beard story where Blackbeard
took command of his ship of Steve Bonnets ship, and
that there question marks around how that was arrived at
(36:23):
and it didn't seem like it was ever. You know,
some people are like, no, he surely must have vanquished
him and taken him hostage, but there's no real evidence
of that, and there does appear that that Steve Bonnet
may have been willing to just be like, no, you
can have it, which opens up this very very rich
space to explore. And that's why I just think it's
(36:44):
a fun, really smart way to examine what what that
relationship could have been. Obviously not historically accurate to the
best of our knowledge, but wow is it fun. Yeah.
Leslie Jones for days. I love her on that show
so much. Um and I It's one of those things
too that I think sometimes people think if you uh
(37:06):
study history or talk about history for a living like
we do, like we would not be down with fictionalized history.
Could not be further from the Yeah, Honestly, I would
rather see something really creative that just plays around with
things than like totally factual, like you feel like you're
(37:33):
gonna hear a beep and it will get right. Yeah.
I also feel like he doesn't get mentioned nearly enough.
But the person who created that show is actually David Jenkins.
Sometimes tycho A t T gets credit for having created it,
and I understand he's a very creative and fascinating person.
I love pretty much everything he's ever touched, but m
(37:54):
David Jenkins gets all of the and that cast is spectacular. Um. Yes,
if you haven't watched it and you're down with some
profanity and some very very silly things, it's a very
fun one. Highly recommend it. Uh. If you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
(38:17):
us on social media pretty much everywhere as Missed in History,
and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeart
radio app or wherever it is you listen to your
favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i
heeart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(38:39):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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