They’re simple, they’re American and come Thanksgiving, everybody saves room for them. But the pies we know today are a fairly recent addition to a history that goes back as long as mankind has had dough to bake into a crust and stuff to put inside it. In medieval England, they were called pyes, and instead of being predominantly sweet, they were most often filled with meat — beef, lamb, wild duck, magpie pigeon — spiced with pepper, currants or dates. Historians trace pie’s initial origins to the Greeks, who are thought to be the originators of the pastry shell, which they made by combining water and flour. The wealthy Romans used many different kinds of meats — even mussels and other types of seafood — in their pies. Meat pies were also often part of Roman dessert courses, or secundae mensea. Cato the Younger recorded the popularity of this sweet course, and a cheesecake-like dish called Placenta, in his treatise De Agricultura.
Contrary to grade school theater productions across the United States, there was no modern-day pie — pumpkin, pecan or otherwise — at the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621. Pilgrims brought English-style, meat-based recipes with them to the colonies. While pumpkin pie, which is first recorded in a cookbook in 1675, originated from British spiced and boiled squash, it was not popularized in America until the early 1800s. Historians don’t know all the dishes the Pilgrims served in the first Thanksgiving feast, but primary documents indicate that pilgrims cooked with fowl and venison — and it’s not unlikely that some of that meat found its way between sheets of dough at some point. The colonists cooked many a pie: because of their crusty tops, pies acted as a means to preserve food, and were often used to keep the filling fresh during the winter months. And they didn’t make bland pies, either: documents show that the Pilgrims used dried fruit, cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg to season their meats. Further, as the colonies spread out, the pie’s role as a means to showcase local ingredients took hold and with it came a proliferation of new, sweet pies. A cookbook from 1796 listed only three types of sweet pies; a cookbook written in the late 1800s featured 8 sweet pie varieties; and by the 1947 the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking listed 65 different varieties of sweet pies.
There are few things as American as apple pie, as the saying goes, but like much of America’s pie tradition, the original apple pie recipes came from England. These pre-Revolutionary prototypes were made with unsweetened apples and encased in an inedible shell. Yet the apple pie did develop a following, and was first referenced in the year 1589, in Menaphon by poet R. Greene: “Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies.” (500 years later, we have “I’m Lovin’ It”, thanks to McDonald’s and its signature apple pie in an individual-serving sleeve.) Pies today are world-spanning treats, made with everything from apples to avocados. The winners of this year’s annual APC Crisco National Pie Championship included classic apple, pumpkin and cherry pies, but citrus pies, banana foster crème and Wolf Pack trail mix pies have all made the awards list. Pies have come a long way since the days of magpie and pepper, but many bakeries — including The Little Pie Shop in New York City, in the audio below — say a classic apple pie is still their top holiday seller.
FAQs
The Ancient Egyptians were the first to invent a dish close to what we know as a pie today. They had a honey filling covered in a crusty cake made from oats, wheat, rye or barley. A recipe for chicken pie was also discovered on a tablet carved prior to 2000 BC.
What is the history of pie dish? ›
The history of the pie has its roots in ancient Egypt and Greece. The ancient Greeks ate pie (artocreas), though it was of the savory type with meat in an open pastry shell. The Romans may have been the first to create a pie that included a top and bottom crust.
What is the history of pie for kids? ›
Pie has a long and varied history. Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians made a form of pie that included a crust of crushed grain mixed with water and a meat filling. Originally, the crust was so thick and dense that it was not edible.
Who invented pie first? ›
Archimedes was the first person to calculate an accurate estimate for pi, which we've since discovered is equal to about 3.14159.
What were pies originally called? ›
The earliest pie-like recipes refer to coffyns (the word actually used for a basket or box), with straight sealed sides and a top; open-top pies were called traps.
Why is it named pie? ›
"Pie" was the word for a magpie before it was a word for a pastry, from the Latin word for the bird, Pica (whence the name of the disorder that makes you eat weird things). Pica morphed into "pie" in Old French, following the proud French tradition of actually pronouncing as few consonants as possible.
Who brought the pie to America? ›
Eventually, European settlers brought the dish to the colonies, where they used the domesticated apples they had introduced to the continent to make pies. The dish quickly caught on.
Why did they put birds in pies? ›
A pie bird is a hollow ceramic or stoneware tool that is placed in the center of pies to prevent the filling from bubbling over.
Why is pie called pie math? ›
The first recorded use of π as a mathematical symbol comes from the Welsh mathematician William Jones in a 1706 work called Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos, in which he abbreviated the Greek περιϕέρεια, (meaning “circumference,” or “periphery”) to its first letter: π.
What makes a pie a pie? ›
Pie is defined as a baked food in a pastry-lined pan or dish that has a fruit, meat, pudding, or other filling, and it often also has a pastry crust on top.
Historians trace the origin of pie to the Egyptians back in 9500 BCE. In Egypt, the first pies were made with ground grains like barley, wheat, or oats combined with water. This “dough” was shaped into an oval and filled with savory ingredients like nuts, honey, and meat.
Why were pies called coffins? ›
A coffin or coffyn referred to a container made of pastry, a precursor of the modern pie crust, and food was served in the coffin it had been cooked in. The first printed use of the word coffin as a box for a corpse appeared later, in the 16th century. Historians trace pies back to ancient times.
What is the most popular pie in America? ›
The clear winner for the United States as a whole was (not surprisingly) apple pie with more than 27% of sales going to the traditional flavor.
How did we come up with pie? ›
Here's a brief history of finding π. The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle by taking 3 times the square of its radius, which gave a value of pi = 3. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 1900–1680 BC) indicates a value of 3.125 for π, which is a closer approximation.
Where did pie 3.14 come from? ›
Archimedes computed upper and lower bounds of π by drawing a regular hexagon inside and outside a circle, and successively doubling the number of sides until he reached a 96-sided regular polygon. By calculating the perimeters of these polygons, he proved that 223/71 < π < 22/7 (that is, 3.1408 < π < 3.1429).
What do pies stand for? ›
PIES are the four areas of a child's development- physical, intellectual, emotional, and social. Each of these areas is important to a child's overall development and a parent should engage their children in the PIES every day.
Why is pi called pi? ›
The first recorded use of π as a mathematical symbol comes from the Welsh mathematician William Jones in a 1706 work called Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos, in which he abbreviated the Greek περιϕέρεια, (meaning “circumference,” or “periphery”) to its first letter: π.
