What is pie?

The first pies were very simple and generally of the savory (meat and cheese) kind. Flaky pastry fruit-filled turnovers appeared in the early 19th century. Some pie-type foods are made for individual consumption. These portable pies... pasties, turnovers, empanadas, pierogi, calzones...were enjoyed by working classes and sold by street vendors. Pie variations (cobblers, slumps, grunts, etc.) are endless!

How old is "pie?"

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word "pie" as it relates to food to 1303, noting the word was well-known and popular by 1362.

Why call it "pie?"

"Pie...a word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to the country or even to region....The derivation of the word may be from magpie, shortened to pie. The explanation offered in favour or this is that the magpie collects a variety of things, and that it was an essential feature of early pies that they contained a variety of ingredients."

---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, 2nd edition, Tom Jaine editor [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2006 (p. 603)

First pies

Food historians confirm ancient people made pastry. Recipes, cooking techniques, meal presence and presentations varied according to culture and cuisine. In the cradles of civilization (Mediterranean region including Ancient Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Arabia) the primary fat was olive oil. When combined with ground grains, it produced a rudimentary type of pastry. The challenging part of researching these early pies is most of us rely on translators of original texts. These can vary according to scholarly proficiency and educated interpretation. Moreover, there are several editions of ancient texts and recipe numbers/titles do not always match.

Food historians confirm the ancients crafted foods approximating pie. Modern pie, as we Americans know it today, descends from Medieval European ingredients (fat=suet, lard, butter) and technology (pie plates, freestanding pies, tiny tarts).

"The idea of enclosing meat inside a sort of pastry made from flour and oil originated in ancient Rome, but it was the northern European use of lard and butter to make a pastry shell that could be rolled out and moulded that led to the advent of true pie."

---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 254)

"If the basic concept of 'a pie' is taken to mean a mixture of ingredients encased and cooked in pastry, then proto-pies were made in the classical world and pies certainly figured in early Arab cookery. But those were flat affairs, since olive oil was used as the fat in the pastry and will not produce upstanding pies; pastry made with olive oil is 'weak' and readily slumps."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, 2nd edition, Tom Jaine editor [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2006 (p. 603)

Ancient Roman recipes

"[287] [Baked picnic] Ham [Pork Shoulder, fresh or cured] Pernam The hams should be braised with a good number of figs and some three laurel leaves; the skin is then pulled off and cut into square pieces; these are macerated with honey. Thereupon make dough crumbs of flour and oil. [1] Lay the dough over or around the ham, stud the top with the pieces of the skin so that they will be baked with the dough [bake slowly] and when done, retire from the oven and serve. [2]"

---Apicius, Book VII, IX, Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, edited and translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling, facsimile 1936 edition [Dover Publications:Mineola NY] 1977 (p. 169)

[NOTES (appended to this recipe: [1] Ordinary pie or pastry dough, or perhaps a preparation similar to streusel, unsweetened.

[2] Experimenting with this formula, we have adhered to the instructions as closely as possible, using regular pie dough to envelope the parboiled meat. The figs were retired from the sauce pan long before the meat was done and they were served around the ham as a garnish.]

Compare with this Latin text, English translation and modern instructions:

"Pernam, ubi eam cum caricis plurimis elixa veris et tribus lauri foliis, detracta cute tessellatim indicis et melle complebis. Deinde farinam oleo subactam contexes et ei corium reddis et cum farina cocta fuerit, eximas furno ut est et inferes." Boil the ham with a large number of dried figs and 3 bay leaves. Remove the skin and make diagonal incisions into the meat. Pour in honey. Then make a dough of oil and flour and wrap the ham in it. Take it out of the oven when the dough is cooked and serve. (Ap. 393)...

"Cover the base of a pan, large enough to take the ham, with figs and lay the ham, stuffed with figs, on top. Fill the pan with water, and add 3 bay leaves. Cover, and boil the ham for 1 hour over a low heat. In the meantime make the pastry...When the ham is cooked, dry it well and make incisions all over the flesh. Baste it with honey while it cooks. Then wrap it in the dough and decorate it. Preheat the oven to 200 C/400 F/Gas 6, and bake for 30 minutes until the crust is golden. leave to cool." (p. 268) "Pastry dough: Roman pastry dough was made with lard or olive oil rather than butter. Use double the weight of fat in flour. Spelt flour needs rather less fat than wheat flour. Rub the fat into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Pour in a little salted water and press the crumbs into a ball. Leave in a cool place for several hours. Then roll it into a sheet on a marble surface dusted with flour, and use as the recipe requires." (p. 195)

---Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome, Patrick Faas [Palgrave MacMillan:New York] 2003 ?

Cato's Layered cheesecake has pastry bottom crust.

Mesopotamia

"Mersu (Date and Pistachio Pastry). Mersu was a widely known pastry. Different inventories list different ingredients for mersu, so there were many recipes. mersu always seemed to contain first-quality dates and butter; beyond that, different records list pistachios, garlic, onion seed, and other seemingly incongruous ingredients. Bakers who specialized in this treat were known as the episat mersi, so mersu-making was probably an involved and respected process." ---Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, Cathy K. Kaufman [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 31)

[NOTE: Modernized recipe follows (p. 31-32). Finished product wraps dough around filling, free form, not in a pie dish.]

Medieval European pies

There is some controversy whether the pastry crust used in Medieval times was meant for eating or as a cooking receptacle. The answer is both. A careful examination of these early recipes reveals crust purpose.

"Originally pies contained various assortments of meat and fish, and fruit pies do not appear until the late sixteenth century...pies could be open as well as having a crust on top."

---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 254)

American pies

"As a favored dish of the English, pies were baked in America as soon as the early settlers set up housekeeping on dry land. Beyond mere preference, howevers, there was a practical reason for making pies, especially in the harsh and primitive conditions endured by the first colonists. A piecrust used less flour than bread and did not require anything as complicated as a brick oven for baking. More important, though, was how pies could stretch even the most meager provisions into sustaining a few more hungry mouths...No one, least of all the early settlers, would probably proclaim their early pies as masterpieces of culinary delight. The crusts were often heavy, composed of some form of rough flour mixed with suet."

---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004 (p. 272)

Pastry

pie crust

puff paste

"Small sweet cakes eaten by the ancient Egyptians may well have included types using pastry. With their fine flour, oils, and honey they had the materials, and with their professional bakers they had the skills. In the plays of Aristophenes (5th century BC) there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. Nothing is known of the actual pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker. The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to cover meats and fowls which were baked, thus keeping in the juices. (The covering was not meant to be eaten; it filled the role of what was later called puff paste') A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the minor items served at banquets....In Medieval Northern Europe the usual cooking fats were lard and butter, which--especially lard--were conducive to making stiff pastry and permitted development of the solid, upright case of the raised pie...No medieval cookery books give detailed instructions on how to make pastry; they assume the necessary knowledge...Not all Medieval pastry was coarse. Small tarts would be made with a rich pastry of fine white flour, butter, sugar, saffron, and other good things, certainly meant to be eaten. From the middle of the 16th century on, actual recipes for pastry begin to appear. ..The first recipe for something recognizable as puff pastry is in Dawson [The Good Housewife's Jewell, London]...1596."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 586-7).

"Greek pistores had mastered the art of giving their bread the most extravagant forms, shaping it like mushrooms, braids, crescents, and so on...thus illustrating in advance Careme's observation a thousand years later: "The fine arts are five in number, namely: painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal branch of the latter being pastry." And since it is not possible for us to discuss flour without dealing with cakes, the moment has come to pose the question of what pastry consisted of in antiquity, what it looked like and how it was made. The regrettable loss of the great Treatise on Baking, by Chrysippus of Tyranus, which included detailed reicpes for more than thirty cakes, each entirely different, leaves us somewhat short of information on this important subject. But various cross-checks (not to mention the consulation of Apicius) nonetheless give us a rather good idea of what the ancient Greeks and Romans confected in this domain...the makers of Greco-Roman pastry had no knowledge of the subleties of dough, and thus having nothing like our present-day babas, doughnuts, bioches, savarins, creampuffs, millefeuille pastry, pastry made from raised dough or shortbreads...as a general rule, Greek pastry closely resembled the sort that is still found today in North Africa, the Near East, and the Balkans: the basic mixture was honey, oil, and flour, plus various aromatic substances, notably pepper. The most frequent method of cooking was frying, but pastry was also cooked beneath coals. Other ingredients included pine nuts, walnuts, dates, almonds, and poppy seeds. This mixture was mainly baked in the form of thin round cakes and in the form doughnuts and fritters...Roman pastry does not appear to have included many innovations over and above what the Greeks had already invented."

---Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food, Jean-Francois Revel [Doubleday:Garden City] 1979 (p. 68-9)

Professional pastry guilds & chefs

"Patissiere...Prehistoric man made sweet foods based on maple or birch syrup, wild honey, fruits, and seeds. It is thought that the idea of cooking a cereal paste on a stone in the sun to make pancakes began as far back in time as the Neolithic age...In the Middle Ages in France, the work of bakers overlapped with that of the pastrycooks; bakers made gingerbread and meat, cheese, and vegetable pies...However, it was the Crusaders who gave a decisive impetus to patisseries, by discovering sugar cane and puff pastry in the East. This lead to pastrycooks, bakers, and restauranteurs all claiming the same products as their own specialties, and various disputes arose when one trade encroached upon the other...Another order, in 1440, gave the sole rights for meat, fish, and cheese pies to patisseries, this being the first time that the word appeared. Their rights and duties were also defined, and certain rules were established...In the 16th century, patissier products were still quite different from the ones we know today. Choux pastry is said to have been invented in 1540 by Popelini, Catherine de' Medici's chef, but the pastrycook's art only truly began to develop in the 17th century and greatest innovator at the beginning of the 19th century was indubitably [Antonin] Careme...There were about a hundred pastrycooks in Paris at the end of the 18th century. In 1986 the count for the whole of France was over 40,000 baker-pastrycooks and 12,5000 pastrycooks."

---Larousse Gastronomique, Jenifer Harvey Lang, editor [Crown:New York] 1988 (p. 777-8) "The bakers of France made cakes too until one day in 1440 when a specialist corporation, the corporation of pastrycooks, deprived them of the right to do so. The pastrycooks had begun by making pies--meat pies, fish pies...Romans had known how to make a kind flaky pastry sheet by sheet, like modern filo pastry, but the new method of adding butter, folding and rolling meant that the pastry would rise and form sheets as it did so. Louis XI's favourite marzipan turnovers were made with flaky pastry...From the sixteenth century onwards convents made biscuits and fritters to be sold in the aid of good works...Missionary nuns took their talents as pastrycooks to the French colonies..."

---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 242-244) "Although the Paris pastry guild did not record its first constitution until 1440, there may well have been pastry specialties before that date. Once their guild was recognized, they began to expand the range of their production: in addition to meat pastries and tarts, they also created pastries out of milk, eggs, and cream, usually sweetened, such as darioles, flans, and dauphins. In order to become a master pastry maker in Le Mans in the early sixteenth century, one had to be able to use sugar loaves to make hypocras, a sweet, spiced wine used as an aperitif and after-dinner drink. It was not until 1566 that the king joined the Paris cookie makers guild to that of the pastry makers, and the two would be wedded frequently thereafter."

---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia University:New York] 1999 (p.281-2) See also: cakes. Frozen pie crusts?

Food historians laud Clarence Birdseye for launching the American frozen food industry. Fruits, veggies, fish were first offerings. Other foods followed in swift progression. Swanson and Morton pioneered the frozen pie market; concentrating savory selections [Chicken, Turkey, Beef]. The earliest reference we find for frozen pie crust, as a stand-alone consumer retail product, appears in the mid-1950s. In 1955, a process for making frozen pie crust (rolled) was patented. This item was packaged in roll from; not as ready-to-bake tinned shells. This USA patent. was filed by Billie Hamilton Armstrong [TN] on June 4, 1954 and published December 6, 1955. Subsequent USA period ads do not describe frozen pie crusts. We have no way to know how the first frozen crusts were packaged: rolled & destined for homemaker's own pie pans or pre-shelled "ready to fill" in disposable tins. In 1963 newspapers across America heralded a "new" frozen pie crust sold in 9-inch tins; without referencing brand or company. The year before, two companies rolled out new frozen pie crust products. Both were marketed to consumers in super markets. Pet-Ritz is generally credited for introducing shelled frozen pie crust products to the American public. Oronoque Orchards [Stratford CT], a local farm stand famous for its pies, may have actually eclipsed Pet-Ritz by a couple of months. Pet-Ritz took marketed their product nationally; Oronoque Orchards remained local. By the mid-'60s, frozen pie shells were ubiquitous. [1955]

"Pillsbury's Frozen Pie Crust, 2 pkgs., 35 cents."---Vidette-Messenger [Valparisio IN], February 15, 1955 (p. 16) "Puncture-Free Pie Crust. Frozen pie crust has to be compounded carefully so as to resist tearing and puncturing between the time it is rolled and the time the housewife spreads it in the baking tin. Billie Hamilton Armstrong of Hohenwald, Tenn., has found a good proportion to be about two parts "soft" flour from summer-ripening wheat and one part "hard" flour from the winter vareity. She divides the batch into pats of about one pound each and then subdivides these into smaller bits, rolling them by hand to sheet form. This preliminary sheet is returned to pat form and rolled in a machine into pre-formed pie crusts about twelve to sixteen inches one-sixteenth of an inch thick. They got to the supermarket frozen, rolled in waxed paper and packed in light cardboard. Pie crusts prepared from dough made by her method, which is protected by Patent 2,726,156, "have uniformly superiour characteristics," Mrs. Hamilton says, "combining the essential factors for exceptional flakiness and delactable taste."

---"Patent on Lev Single-Cap Hatbox Brings Inquiry by Senate Group," Stacy V. Jones, New York Times, December 10, 1955 (p. 28) [1956]

"King's 2 in Pkg. Frozen Pie Crust, 35 cents."

---Blytheville Courier News [AR], December 13, 1956 (p. 20) [1957]

"Pet-Ritz Fruit Pies, frozen, ready to bake. Now you can bake your family a real fruit-country pie--a Pet-Ritz Pie with juicy, sun-sweet fruit heaped high in a delicately tender crust, fir shiw golden butter! This very day, see why so many people say no pies compare with Pet-Ritz Apple, cherry, peach...6 delicious fruit or berry favorites...made the traditional fruit-country way, baked by you the new easy way!. Pet-Ritz brings the country's best to you."

---display ad, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1957 (p. A6)

[NOTE: these pies were complete, no indication crust were also sold separately.] [1958]

"Frozen Pie Crust, pgk. 29 cents."

---Panola Watchman [Carthage TX], November 20, 1958 (p. 44) [1961]

"You! Enjoy the revolutionary new frozen product! Oronoque Frozen Pie crust 69 cents, 2-crust-3 pie pans. Victory [supermarket] will supply free of charge...your choice of any two Jell-O pie fillings."

---Fitchburg Sentinel [MA], December 6, 1961 (p. 34) [1962]

"Pet-Ritz Frozen Pie Crusts and are introduced by Pet Milk, which has created an entirely new product category."

---The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1997 (p. 570) About Pet-Ritz:

"Pet-Ritz Pie Co. was started by the Petritz family. The family originally operated a roadside stand, selling cherry pies to Michigan tourists. The success of the tourist business prompted the family to freeze pies and sell them. With the advent of modern mass production and freezing capabilities, Pet-Ritz Fruit Pies became one of the midwest's leading brands of frozen fruit pies...Because of consumer acceptance of frozen convenience products in the early 1960s, the Frozen Foods Division expanded into other product areas. One frozen product that has been very successful is Pet-Ritz Pie Crust Shells. Pet's expertize in making pie crust for fruit pies made pie crust shells a natural line extension."

---"Petritz family treats now shared by millions," Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1980 (p. S8) "Betty Winton says: Now You Can Make Perfect Pies No Foolin---No Failin' with Oronoque Orchards Frozen Pie Crusts. They're perfct when you buy them. They're perfect when you make them. At King Cole, Smirnoff's and other fine super markets."

---Bridgeport Post [CT], March 5, 1962 (p. 20) [1963]

"New-Frozen Crusts. Easy as pie, the newest in pie crusts. There are frozen pie crust shells, each the 9-inch size, packed in foil pans, all rolled and ready for a favorite filling. Tins serve as the baking pans."

---Redlands Daily Facts [CA], January 8, 1963 (p. 8) "Pet-Ritz...Frozen Pie Crust Shells, pkg of 2, 39 cents."

---Daily News, Huntingdon and Mount Union [PA], January 23, 1963 (p. 12) [1965]

"Pillsbury Frozen Pie Crusts, pkg of two 9 inch shells, 29 cents."

---display ad, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1965 (p. E18) Pie crust sticks

Both Pillsbury and Betty Crocker (General Mills) offered Pie Crust Sticks to the American public in the 1950s-1970s. These were natural iterations of pie crust baking mixes. The innovation factor was these sticks, packaged & wrapped like sticks of butter, only required rolling. Pillsbury pie sticks package. "Pie crust in a rectangular block--it is all ready to roll out or pat into a pan, fill and bake--is a time-saving innovation. Called Continental-style instant pie crust, it is available for about 50 cents at the New York Exchange for Women's Work, 541 Madison Avenue. The term 'Continental' is appropriately used for this product because the baked crust is much more crumbly and finer in consistency than the usual pastry made in this country. And that is not surprising, for the reicpe originated in Poland. Like many another enterprising good cook, Mrs. Olgierd Langer has decided to merchandise this specialty, the recipe for which she obtained from relatives in her native Poland. There is just enough pastry in the foil-wrapped package fora single eight-or-nine-inch pie crust. The package can be kept in the refrigerator for several weeks."

---"Food: New Products," June Owen, New York Times, April 21, 1958 (p. 27) About puff paste

Food historians generally agree puff paste was an invention of Renaissance cooks. It was a natural iteration of shortcrust pastry. Early recipes were listed under various names. The term "puff paste" became standard in early 17th century English cooking texts. "Puff paste is thought to have been perfected by the brilliant pastry chefs to the court of the dukes of Tuscany, perhaps in the fifteenth century. From there it made its was to the royal court of France, most likely brought by Marie de Medici."

---Martha Washington's Book of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia:New York] 1981 (page156) In England, puff paste was a natural iteration of short paste. Compare these recipes:

[1545] To make short paste for tart

[1596] "To make butter paste

Take flour and seven or eight eggs, and cold butter and fair water, or rose water, and spices (if you will) and make your paste. Beat it on a board, and when you have so done divide it into two or three parts and drive out the piece with a rolling pin. And do['t] with butter one piece by another, and fold up your paste upon the butter and drive it out again. And so do five or six times together, and some not cut for bearings. Put them into the over, and when they be baked scrape sugar on them and serve them."

---The Good Housewife's Jewel, Thomas Dawson, with an introduction by Maggie Black [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1996 (p. 71) [1615-1660] "Of puff paste.

Now for the making of puff paste of the best kind, you shall take the finest wheat flour after it hath been a little baked in a pot in the oven, and blend it well with eggs, whites and yolks all together, after the paste is well kneaded, roll out a part thereof as thin as you please, and then spread cold sweet butter over the same, then upon the same butter roll another leaf of the paste as before; and spread it with butter also; and thus roll leaf upon leaf with butter between till it be as thick as you think good: and with it either cover any baked meat, or make paste for venison, Florentine, tart of what dish else you please and so bake it. There be some that to this paste use sugar, but it is certain it will hinder the rising thereof; and therefore when your puffed paste is baked, you shall dissolved sugar into rose-water, and drop it into the paste as much as it will by any means receive, and then set it a little while in the oven after and it will be sweet enough."

---The English Hous-wife, Gervase Markham, [W.Wilson:London] 1660 (p. 74) [NOTE: facsimile 1615 edition of this book edited by Michael R. Best [McGill-Queen's University Press:Montreal] 1998 contains this recipe (p. 98) and others. Your librarian can help you obtain a copy.] Related foods? Choux & shortbread. Pie crust

In its most basic definition, pie crust is a simple mix of flour and water. The addition of fat makes it pastry. In all times and places, the grade of the ingredients depends upon the economic status of the cook. Apicius [1st Century AD] makes reference to a simple recipe for crust (see below). Medieval cooking texts typically instruct the cook to lay his fruit or meat in a "coffin," no recipe provided. Up through Medieval times, pie crust was often used as a cooking receptacle. It was vented with holes and sometimes marked to distinguish the baker/owner. Whether or not the crust was consumed or discarded is debated by food historians. Some hypothesize the crust would have been rendered inedible due to extreme thickness and baking time. Others observe flour, and by association flour-based products, was expensive and would not have been thrown away. Possibly? Pies baked in grand Medieval houses served two classes: the wealthy at the contents and the crust was given to the servants or poor. Modern iterations include Frozen pie crust and Pie crust sticks. "Pies and tarts...In the Middle Ages, these sweet and savory preparations baked in a crust were the specialty of patissiers--who had no other functions...We know that medieval cooks did not always have ovens, and they worked with patissiers, to whom they sometimes brought fillings of their own making for the patissier to place in a crust and bake. This explains why cookbooks intended for professional chefs were nearly silent about the ingredients of these pastry wrappings, but spoke only about consistency an thickness, and about the most suitable shapes...Still, medieval cooks might take a chance and cook a simple pie or tart on their own by placing it in a shallow pan, covered with a lid and surrounded by live embers, whose progress they had to monitor very closely...In effect, the pastry because an oven, ensuring moderate heat thanks to its insulating properties...So could it be that these pastry coverings were not necessarily eaten once they had done their job of containing and protecting the fillings?"

---The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon et al, [University of Chicago Press:Chicago] 1998 (p. 133-4) Renaissance patissiers began experimenting with lighter, more malleable doughs. Recipes for short paste ("short" in this case means butter) and puff paste enter cookbooks at this time. 17th century English cook books and reveal several recipes for pie crust and puff paste, all of varying thickness, taste and purpose. Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook [1685] listed fourteen separate recipes for paste (pastry/pie crust/puff paste). American cook books (The Virginia Housewife, Mary Randoph [1828] & Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Miss Leslie [1849]) contain instructions for making pies with puff paste, sometimes decorating them with cut out pieces of this same paste. Mrs. Randolph's recipe for pumpkin pudding (pumpkin pie) states "put a paste around the edges and in the bottom of a shallow dish or plate, pour in the mixture, cut some thin bits of paste, twist them and lay them across the top and bake it nicely." (University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 ( p. 154). Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book [1879] reads: "Cranberry tart...line your plates with thin puff-paste, fill, lay strips of rich puff-paste across the top and bake in a moderate oven." (p. 299). There is no illustration to show us exactly how these strips looked. In addition to being efficient cooking receptacles, covered pies promoted preservation: "The idea of the covered pie. The modern biscuit is a descendant of the barley bannock and the oatcake which have come down to us from the beginning of civilization. It is a method of presering simply by reducing the water content of baked dough to such a degree that the product is not likely to be affected by mould; this is done, with the biscuit, in such a manner as to make chewing easy. The biscuit is thus the result of a successful fight against the dangers threatening normally fermented baked goods, mould, and staleness. The basic idea of the covered pie is a similar one. The covered pie is of very old standing in the British Isles, probably of longer standing than the modern biscuit. It has as a basis a similar dough to the biscuit, finely rolled out so that it can be thoroughly baked like a crust, but not caramelized like a bread-crust. Such a crust, especially when some fat has been added to the dough, is likely to withstand the influence of liquids and semi-liquids without becoming a sticky mess. If it is given an open pie-dish form, it can be used for filling with semi-liquids like minced meat or fruit, the whole thing is protected by the outer layer of the crust against certain contaminates and can be kept for quite a long time."

---(p. 184) Apicius' recipe: [287] [Baked Picnic] HAM [Pork Shoulder, fresh or cured] PERNAM

The ham should be raised with a good number of figs and some three laurel leaves; the skin is then pulled off and cut into square pieces; these are macerated with hone. Thereupon make dough crumbs of flour and oil. Lay the dough over or around the ham, stud the top with the pieces of the skin so that they will be baked with the dough and when done, retire from the oven and serve."

---Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, Edited and translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling [Dover:New York] 1977 (p. 169) American apple pie

Recipes for apple pie (along with apples!) were brought to America by early European settlers. These recipes date back to Medieval times. This 14th century English book offers For to Make Tartys in Applis. [NOTE: cofyn is a medieval word meaning pie crust!]. About pie.

"The typical American pie made from uncooked apples, fat, sugar, and sweet spices mixed together and baked inside a closed pie shell descends from fifteenth-century English apple pies, which, while not quite the same, are similar enough that the relationship is unmistakable. By the end of the sixteenth century in England, apple pies were being made that are virtually identical to those made in America in the early twenty-first century. Apple pies came to America quite early. There are recipes for apple pie in both manuscript receipts and eighteenth-century English cookery books imported into the colonies."

---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004 (p. 43)

As American as Apple Pie

Who coined this phrase?

What does it mean?

"The expression "as American as apple pie" wasn't the product of an overzealous imagination. Apple dishes of one kind or another could be found at practically every colonial meal, especially in New England. The apple was made into pies and fritters and puddings and slumps, literally a host of dishes. The colonists had inherited some of their taste for apples from the British along with many of the British recipes, but many other dishes were the products of American invention."

---Apples: History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy, Peter Wynne [Hawthorn:New York] 1975 (p. 24)

"When you say that something is "as American as apple pie," what you're really saying is that the item came to this country from elsewhere and was transformed into a distinctly American experience."

---As American as Apple Pie, John Lehndorff, American Pie Council.

Martha Washington's recipe: Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery (which was hand transcribed in the middle/late 17th century and in Mrs. Washington's possession) contains a recipe for an codling [apple] tarte. Note the archaic language (and lack of directions we now think of as *standard,* such as measurements and oven temps!): [To Make] A Codling Tarte Eyther to Looke Clear or Green

"First coddle [poach] ye [the] apples in faire water; yn [then] take halfe the weight in sugar & make as much syrrop as will cover ye bottom of yr [your] preserving pan, & ye rest of ye suger keepe to throw on them as the boyle, which must be very softly; & you must turne them often least they burne too. Then put them in a thin tart crust, & give them with theyr syrrup halfe an hours bakeing; or If you pleas, you may serve them up in a handsome dish, onely garnished with suger & cinnamon. If you would gave yr apples looke green, coddle them in fair water, then pill them, & put them into ye water againe, & cover them very close. Then lay them in yr coffins [ crust] of paste with lofe [loaf] suger, & bake them not too hard. When you serve them up, put in with a tunnell [funnel] to as many of them as you pleas, a little thick sweet cream."

---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press:New York] 1981 (p. 95-96)

[Ms. Hess adds these notes regarding codlings: "Some writers describe codlings as immature or windfall apples, and this may have been tru ate times, but the term also designated a specific apple, rather elongated and tapering toward the flower end...All sources agree that the codling was good only for cooking."] Similar recipes appear in American Cookery, Amelia Simmons [1796], The Virginia Housewife, Mary Randolph [1824] and The Good Housekeeper, Sarah Josepha Hale [1841]. Some American historic apple pie recipes:

[1796] American Cookery, Amelia Simmons

[1803] Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter

[1865] Mrs. Goodfellow's cookery as it should be. A new manual of the dining room and kitchen

---pies (pps. 209-226); apple pie (pps. 215 & 220)

[1918] Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Merritt Farmer Related food? Turnovers. Why do some people serve cheddar cheese with apple pie?

The practice of combining cheese, fruit, and nuts dates back to ancient times. These were often served at the end of a meal because they were thought to aid in digestion. From the earliest days through the Renaissance, the partaking of these foods was generally considered a priviledge of the wealthy. This practice was continued by wealthy dinners composed of many courses up until the 19th century. Apples and cheesemaking were introduced to the New World by European settlers. These people also brought with them their recipes and love for certain combinations. This explains the popular tradition of apple pie and cheddar cheese in our country. "The dark ages...The main meal was taken around the middle of the day...In the evening a light supper was taken and this was always finished with a little hard cheese, for digestion's sake. Gradually the large mid-day meal was later taken until that meal, wine-drinking and the cheese supper were combined. Thus was born the British habit of finishing an evening meal with cheese; almost every other society has eaten cheese before the sweet course to finish their main wine, or instead of a sweet."

---Cheese: A Guide to the World of Cheese and Cheesemaking, Bruno Battistotti et al [Facts on File Publications:New York] 1983 (p. 14-5) "'After meat, [serve] pears, nuts, strawberries, wineberries and hard cheese, also blanderelles, pippins [apples].' All were considered hard or astringent, and therefore suitable to close up the stomache again after eating. Even so, apples and pears when taken at the end of the meal were usually roasted, and eaten with sugar, comfits, fennel seed or aniseed 'because of their ventosity.' Ordinary folk ate fruit as and when they could get it. The poor people in Piers Plowman sought to poison hunger with baked apples..."

---Food and Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 334) Related food: Apple sauce What about Mock Apple Pie?

Imitation apple pies (Mock Apple Pie, Soda Cracker Pie, Cracker Pie) made with soda crackers were the pride of thrifty mid-19th century American cooks. Recipes for Mock Apple Pie using Nabisco brand Ritz Crackers first surfaced in the mid-1950s. Early recipes published in newspapers are attributed to readers, not the company. We do not know when Nabisco began printing Mock Apple Pie recipes on product boxes. Other crackers are also used, most notably saltines. Some mid-20th century articles state Mock Apple Pie was “invented” during the Great Depression. This “fact” circulated enough so people accepted it as truth into the late 20th century. Mock Apple Pie recipe survey

[1857]

“Mock Apple Pie

Over one and one half cups of bread crumbs, pour four cups of boiling water; add one cup of sugar, one grated nutmeg, small piece of butter, large teaspoonful of tartaric acid; when cool, add an egg well beaten. Bake with two crusts. This is an excellent substitute when apples are scarce.—Quaker Girl, Minnie…”

---“Quaker Minnie—Out-of doors & In-doors,” Brookville American [IN], February 27, 1857 (p. 4) "Cracker Pie.--As apples are very scarce in many sections of the country, I think the housewife will find the following recipe for making an apple pie out of crackers, very acceptable. For a common sized baking plate, take four of the square or size of the round crackers, a teacupfull of sugar, and a teaspoonfull of tartaric aid; break the crackers into a pint of water, add the sugar and spice and finish as an apple pie.--Cor. Rural New Yorker."

---"Useful Receipts," Saturday Evening Post, February 14, 1857, American Periodicals (p. 4) [1869]

"Imitation Apple Pie

Six soda-bicuit soaked in three cups of cold water, the grated rind and juice of three lemons, and sugar to your taste. This will make three pies."

---Mrs. Putnam's Receipt Book and Young Housekeeper's Assistant, Mrs. Putnam, new and enlarged edition [Sheldon and Company:New York] 1869 (p. 119) [1875]

“Mock Apple Pie,--Two soda crackers, one egg, one cup of sugar and one of water, the juice and yellow rind of a lemon. Bake with upper and one under crust.”

---“Household Helps,” Aurora Dearborn Independent [IN], August 19, 1875 (p. 4) [1879]

"Soda Cracker Pie.

Pour water on two large or four round soda crackers and let the remain till thoroughly wet. Then press out the water and crush them up together. Stir in the juice and grated peel of a lemon, with a cupful or more of powdered sugar. Put in pastry and bake.--Mrs. H.L"

---Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Marion Cabell Tyree [John P. Morton and Company:Louisville KY] 1879 (p. 413) [1903]

"Mock Apple Pie

Two soda biscuits break in small pieces (do not roll): pour 1 cup boiling water on small pieces of butter, little salt, juice of 1 lemon and little of rind grated, a little nutmeg and you have a nice substitute for apple pie. Try it, please. Old Housekeeper."

---"Household Department," Boston Daily, September 24, 1903 (p. 9) [1956]

“This week’s recipe comes from my mother—Mrs. Harold Hobson…It’s for Mock Apple Pie and it doesn’t have an apple in it!

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

2 teasp. Cream of tartar

20 Ritz crackers

1 double pie crust

Put the filling ingredients in a saucepan and boil for 2 min. Cool and put in pie crusts. Season with butter and cinnamon. Bake as you would a real apple pie.”

---Algona Upper[Des Moines IA], July 17, 1956 (p. 11) [1960]

“Mock Apple Pie

2 cups water

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. cream of tartar

26 Ritz crackers

2 tbsp. cinnamon

Nutmeg

Butter

Boil water, sugar and cream of tartar for five minutes. Add Ritz crackers. Do not stir. Boil two minutes. Pour into unbaked pie shell and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Dot with butter. Cover with top crust and bake at 425 F degrees for 30 minutes. Some recipes call for 1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice for flavoring. If used it should be stirred into the water and cream of tartar before Ritz Crackers are added. From: Mrs. Hazel Custerson.”

---“Tasty Desserts,” Medicine Hat News [Alberta Canada], February 19, 1960 (p. 47) [1991]

"Mock Apple Pie is Back. While the pundits debate the condition of the economy, 1,500 consumers a year have been clamoring for a recipe that is a holdover from the Depression. In response to their requests, the recipe for mock apple pie is back on boxes of Ritz crackers, after a 10-year hiatus. The pie is made with cracker crumbs, water, sugar, lemon juice, cream of tartar, margarine and cinnamon. It contains no apples, yet it tastes something like apple pie. A spokeswoman for Nabiso Brands said that decades ago, apples were not as readily available out of season and those that were available were expensive, accounting for the popularity of the mock apple pie. Actually, the recipe is a lot older than Ritz crackers. Pioneer families crossing the Great Plains in the 19th century also made pies like this when they ran out of fresh or dried apples, using apple juice or apple-cider vinegar in place of the lemon juice."

---"Food Notes," Florence Fabricant, New York Times, February 20, 1991 (p. C8) About soda crackers & Ritz Crackers. Related food? Apple cider Apple Crisp, Brown Betty, Pandowdy & Slump

Tasty combinations of apples, spices, sweeteners and pastry were known to ancient cooks. Medieval Europeans used apples frequently. They also perfected pie. When they settled in the New World, they brought their apple pie recipes with them. Apple crisp, apple betty, brown betty, apple slump, apple grunt, apple cobbler, apple pot pie, fried apple pies, apple bread pudding, & apple pandowdy are delicious American cousins descending from a common Old World culinary tradition. Essentially: one recipe done a dozen delicious ways. Why call it pandowdy?

"Pandowdy...U.S. [Of obscure origin;... a compound of Pan...Halliwell cites from Bp. Kennet's MS. pandoulde a custard (Somerset); but this is now unknown in Eng. dialects.] A kind of apple pudding, variously seasoned, bu usually with molasses and baked in a deep dish with or without a crust. 1846 Worcester, Pandowdy, food make of bread and apples baked together. 1852 Hawthorne Blithedale Rom xxiv, Hollingsworth [would] fill my plate from the great dish of pandowdy."

---Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 131)

[NOTE: EDD is the English Dialect Dictionary, Joseph Wright, London, 1898-1904, supplement, 1905).] "Pandowdy...n.. A dessert of apples prepared in various ways. Cf. apple dowdy, apple pandowdy. Pandowdy is usu. a deep-dish apple pie, freq. one sweetened with molasses. The crust may be of pastry, biscuit, dough, or cake dough. Sometimes it is steamed, sometimes baked. The name is also applied to brown betty...The origin of the term is obscure. EDD lists an obs. pandoulde, custard from Somerset. Also cf EDD's dowl, a verb meaning to knead or mix dough in a hurry, and dowler, a cake or a dumpling made in a hurry.' 1805 Pocumtuc HousewifeLife J. Downing 101 'You don't know how queer it looks to see...politics and pan-dowdy...jumbled up together. 1893 Leland Memoirs I. 74 Pan-Dowdy--'a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie.'"

---Dictionary of Americanisms on Historic Principles, Mitford M. Mathew editor [University of Chicago Press:Chicago IL] 1951 (p. 1193) [1849]

"Apple Bread Pudding.--Pare, core and slice thin a dozen or more fine juicy pippins, or bell-flowers, strewing among them some bits of yellow rind of a large lemon that has been pared very thin, and squeezing over them the juice of the lemon. Or substitute a tea-spoonful of essence of lemon. Cover the bottom of a large deep dish with a thick layer of sliced apples. Strew it thickly with brown sugar theb scatter on a few very small bits of the best fresh butter. Next strew over it a thin layer of grated bread-crumbs. Afterwards another thick layer of apple, followed by sugar, butter, and bread-crumbs as before. Continue this till you get the dish full, finishing with a thin layer of crumbs. Put the dish into a moderate oven, and bake the pudding well, ascertaning that the apples are thorougly done and a soft as marmalade. Send it to table either hot or cold, and eat it with cream-sauce, or with butter, sugar, and nutmeg, stirred to a cream. This pudding is in some places called by the homely names of Brown Betty or Pan Dowdy. It will require far less baking, if the apples are previously stewed soft, and afterwards mixed with the sugar and lemon. Then put it into the dish, in layers, interspersed (as above) with bits of butter, and layers of grated crumbs. It will be much improved by the addition of a grated nutmeg, mixed with the apples."

---Directions for Cookery in Its Various Branches, Miss [Eliza] Leslie, 32nd edition with improvmeents, supplementary receipts, and a new appendix [Carey & Hart::Philadelphia] 1849 (p. 463)

[NOTE: This recipe appears in the Appendix "Containing New Receipts."] [1852]

"An Apple Pandowdy.--Make a good plain paste. Pare, core, and slice a half dozen or more fine large juicy apples, and strew among thenm sufficient brown sugar to make them very sweet; adding some cloves, cinnamon, or lemon-peel. Have ready a pint of sour milk. Butter a deep tin baking-pan, and put in the apples with the sugar and spcie. Then, having dissolved, in a litte lukewarm water, a small tea-spoonful of soda, stir it into the milk, and acid of which it will immediately remove. Pour the milk, foaming, upon the appl;es, and immediately put a lid or cover of paste rolled out rather thick. Notch the edge all round, having made it fit closely. Set it into a hot oven, and bake it an hour. Eat warm, wtih sugar."

---Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery. Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Miss [Eliza] Leslie, 47th edition, thoroulgy revised, with additions [Henry Carey Baird:Philadelphia] 1852 (p. 498-499)

[NOTE: This book contains the same exact Apple Bread Pudding recipe above (1849 Leslie) on p. 462-463. It also lists this stand-alone Pandowdy which is quite different. Both recipes appear in "New Receipts" chapter, several pages apart. While they contain some similar ingredients, they are clearly not the same recipe.] [1857]

"A Brown Betty.--Pare, core, and slice thin some fine juicy apples. Cover with the apples the bottom of a large deep white-ware dish. Sweeten them well with plenty of brown sugar; adding grated lemon or orange peel. Strew over them a thick layer of bread-crumbs, and add to the crumbs a very few bits of fresh butter. The put in another layer of cut apples and sugar, followed by a second layer of bread-crumbs and butter. Next more apples and sugar; then more bread-crumbs and butter; repeat this till the dish is full, finishing it with bread-crumbs. Bake it till the apples are entirely done and quite soft. Send it to table hot. It will be improved (if in the country at cider-making season) by adding to each layer of apples a very little sweet unfermented cider, fresh from the press. This pudding is in some places called an Apple Pandowdy. We believe it is Brown Betty in the South; Pandowdy in the North. It is a good plain bpudding if the butter is fresh and sweet, and not too much of it. The apples must be juicy and not sweet. weet apples never cook well."

---Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book, Eliza Leslie [T.B. Peterson:Philadelphia] 1857 (p. 455)

[NOTE: This recipe [1877]

"Brown Betty

Put a layer of sweetened apple sauce in a buttered dish, add a few lumps of butter, then a layer of cracker crumbs sprinkled with a little cinnamon, then layer of sauce, etc., making the last layer of crumbs; bake in oven, and eat with cold, sweetened cream."

---Buckeye Cookery, Estelle Woods Wilcox, facsimile 1877 edition [Applewood Books:Bedford MA] (p. 197)[NOTE: Compare with Swiss Pudding, 1853.] [1916]

"Apple Crisp

This recipe requires eight apples (or one quart), a teaspoon of cinnamon, a half cup of water, one cup of sugar, a half cup of flour and five tablespoons of butter. Butter a fireproof dish and fill it with the apples, water and cinnamon, mixed. Work together the other ingredients, mixing them gently with the fingertips until crumbly, then spread over the apple mixture. Bake 30 minutes, uncovered."

---Freeport Journal-Standard [IL], July 20, 1916 (p. 5) [1923]

"Brown Betty

(four portions)

(A delicious and economical dessert for the home meal.)

Two cups soft bread crumbs

Two and one-half cups peeled diced apples

One cup water

Two level tablespoons butter

One-half cup sugar

One level teaspoon ground cinnamon

One-fourth level teaspoon grated nutmeg

One tablespoon lemon juice.

Mix all the ingredients, and place in a buttered baking-dish. Bake in a moderate oven for forty minutes or until the apples are soft. Serve warm with Hard Sauce or Cream."

---Bettina's Best Desserts, Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron [A.L. Burt Company:New York] 1923 (p. 15) [1924]

"Apple Crisp

2 cups sliced apples

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup water

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 cup sauce

Put apples in greased baking dish. Sprinkle cinnamon over, pour water over. Work together with a fork the four, shortening and sugar. It will be crumbly. Sprinkle over apples. Moderate oven, 30 to 40 min. Serve hot. Any creamy sauce, or Maple Syrup. Total time 45 to 55 min. (Prep. 15 min.) Serves 6 to 8."

---Everybody's Cook Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery, Isabel Ely Lord [Harcourt Brace and Company:New York] 1924 (p. 239) "Apple Crisp

8 apples (sliced) about one quart

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

7 tablespoon shortening

Butter a baking dish and fill with apples, water, and cinnamon mixed. Work together remaining ingredients with finger tips until crumbly, spread over the apple mixture and bake uncovered in a hot oven. Serve with whipped cream, plain top milk, maple syrup or Lemon sauce. Time in oven, 30 minutes. Temperature, 400 degrees F. Servings, 6."

---Modern Priscilla Cook Book, special subscription edition [Priscilla Publishing:Boston] 1924 (p. 147) [1933]

"Apple Brown Betty (Apple Betty)

2 cups applesauce or sliced apples

rind and juice of one lemon

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup breadcrumbs 1. Add lemon juice and rind to applesauce ir sliced apples. 2. Fill a shallow baking dish with alternate layers of the apple and breadcrumbs, beginning with the apple and ending with the breadcrumbs. 3. Dot with butter and sprinkle lightly with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

4. Bake in a moderate oven, about 350 degrees F., until breadcrumbs are well browned on top.

5. Serve with plain or whipped cream or with a hard sauce, or lemon sauce, or honey meringue."

---Girl Scout Handbook [Girl Scouts of America:New York] 1933 (p. 412) [1956]

"Apple Crisp (Apple Crumble)

Place in greased 8" square pan...

4 cups sliced, pared, cored baking apples (about 4 med.)

Blend until crumbly; then spread over apple..

2/3 to 3/4 brown sugar (packed)

1/2 cup sifted Gold Medal flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup soft butter

Bake until apples are tender and topping is golden brown. Serve warm with cream, whipped ice cream, or hard sauce.

Temperature: 375 degrees F. (Quick mod. Oven).

Time: Bake 30 to 35 min.

Amount: 6 to 8 servings." "Brown Betty.

Follow the recipe above --except place alternate layers of the sliced apples and crumb mixture in pan. Pour 1/4 cup water over the top."

---Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, Revised and Enlarged, 2nd edition [McGraw-Hill:New York] 1956 (p. 231) Apple Slump

"Slump. A dish of cooked fruit and raised dough known since the middle of the eighteenth century and probably so called because it is a somewhat misshapen dish that "slumps" one the plate. Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, named her Concord, Massachusetts, home "Apple Slump" and recorded this recipe: Slump

Pare, core and slice 6 apples and combine with one c(up). sugar, 1 t(easpoon) cinnamon, and 1/2 c. water in a saucepan. Cover and beat to boiling point. Meanwhile sift together 1 1/2 c. flour, t t/4 t. salt and 1 1/2 t. baking powder and add 1/2 cup milk to make a soft dough. Drop pieces of the dough from a tablespoon onto apple mixture, cover, and cook over low heat for 30 min. Serve with cream."

---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, (p. 297) Similar recipes, different names: [1853]

"Swiss Pudding.

Lay alternately in a baking dish slices of nice tart apples; on these sprinkle sugar and the grated oily rind of a lemon, and then crumbs of stale rusks which have been soaked in milk; then more slices of apples, sugar, and crumbs of rusks; cut very thin slices of butter and lay thickly on the top; over this sift thickly pulverized sugar; bake one hour, and sent to table in the same dish."

---Cookery as it Should Be, by A Practical Housekeeper and pupil of Mrs. Goodfellow [Willis P. Hazard:Philadelphia] 1853 (p. 222)

[NOTE: there is a handwritten entry in brown fountain pen ink adding this note to the title "or Brown Betty."] [1862]

"Jenny Lind's Pudding

Grate the crumbs of a half a loaf, butter and dish well, and lay a thick layer of the crumbs; pare ten or twelve apples, cut them down, and put a layer of them and sugar; then crumbs alternately, until the dish is full; put a bit of butter on the top, and bake it in an oven or American reflector. An excellent and economical pudding."

---Civil War Recipes: Receipts From the Pages of Godey's Lady's Book, compiled and edited by Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding [University Press of Kentucky:Lexington KY] 1999 (p. 226)

[NOTE: Godey's Lady's Book was a popular American women's magazine of the 19th century. It published many recipes, such as the one above.] [1908]

"Apple Slump

Apple slump is another old fashioned dish, but none the less acceptable on account of its antiquity. Pare, core and quarter a dozen tart, juicy apples, turn over them a cupful of boiling water and set where they will begin to cook. Five minutes later add to the apples two cups of molasses and cook five or more minutes while you prepare a very soft biscuit dough, using for a pint of flour a teaspoonful of sugar, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, a half tablespoonful of shortening, and milk to stir this over the apples, which should be tender, but not broken, cover the kettle closely and cook twenty-five minutes without lifting the cover. Serve with a hot sauce, made by heating to a cream a half cup of butter and one cup of sugar, stirring in just before using a scant cupful of boiling milk or water and seasoning to taste."

---New York Evening Telegram Cook Book, Emma Paddock Telford [Cupples & Leon:New York] 1908 (p. 113) [NOTE: This "modern" version is closer to Apple crisp/Brown Betty. Related recipes? Apple crisp & Brown Betty & French Tarte Tatin. Baklava & filo

The history and origin of baklava, a popular Middle Eastern pastry that is made of many sheets of filo pastry laid flat in a pan and layered with sweet fillings, is commonly attributed to medieval Turkey. "Filo is the Greek name for a dough of many paper-thin layers separated by films of butter...Although known to Europeans and North Americans by a Greek name, the dough is clearly of Turkish origin. The medieval nomad Turks had an obsessive interest in making layered bread, possibly in emulation of the thick oven breads of city people. As early as the 11th century, a dictionary of Turkish dialects (Diwan Lughat al-Turk) recorded pleated/folded bread as one meaning of the word yuvgha, which is related to the word (yufka) which means a single sheet of file in modern Turkish. This love of layering continues among the Turks of Central Asia...The idea of making the sheets paper thins is a later development.The Azerbaijanis make the usual sort of baklava with 50 or so layers of filo, but they also make a...pastry called Baki pakhlavasi (Baku-style baklava) using ordinary noodle paste instead of filo...This may represent the earliest form of baklava, resulting form the Turkish nomads adapting their concept of layered bread--developed in the absence of ovens...If this is so, baklava actually pre-dated filo, and the paper-thin pastry we know today was probably an innovation of the Ottoman sultan's kitchens at Topkapi palace in Istanbul. There is an established connection between the Topkapi kitchens and baklava; on the 15th of Ramadan every year, the Janissary troops stationed in Istanbul used to march to the palace, where every regiment was presented with two trays of baklava. They would...march back to their barracks in what was known as the Baklava Procession."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 299) "[Syrian] baklava are renowned thoughout the Near East. Some (called kol wa shkor) are made with extremely thin layers of filo pastry and have different shapes. Others are made with a type of birds nest' pastry, shaped in cylinders, called borma...All are filled with a mixture of nuts (pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios can all be used), sugar, and rose or orange blossom water, baked, and then coated with sugar syrup."

---Oxford Companion to Food (p. 446) "Persians, renowned patissiers since antiquity, invented the diamond-shaped Baklava which contained a nut stuffing perfumed with jasmine or pussy willow blossoms. In the sixth century the sweetmeat was introduced to the Byzantine court of Justinian I at Constantinople, where they Greeks discovered phyllo (thin pastry) and adopted the dessert which they serve today on New Year's and other joyous occasions."

---The Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking though the Ages, [American Heritage:New York] 1968 (p. 690) If you want to learn more about the history of food during the Ottoman Empire, check out "Ottoman Culinary Culture: It's Effect Upon Contemporary Cuisine," Terrie Wright Chrones, MA (Oregon State University) http://www.orst.edu/food-resource/kelsey/chrones.html Related foods? Mille feuille & Napoleons! Mud pie

There seems to be some controversy regarding the history of this particular dessert. Also sometimes known as "Missisippi Mud Pie" and "Louisiana Mud Pie," food historians generally trace Mud pie to the 1970s and when it hit mainstream restaurants. Most notably: The Chart House restaurant chain. Print evidence confirms this recipe first surfaced in 1960s California. Noteriety grew in the 1970s and popularity exploded when it became a "signature" dessert of the chocoholic 1980s. What is Mud pie?

Excellent question with no definative answer. This recipe invites experimentation. Early print descriptions suggest the original dessert was a frozen fudge infused ice cream pie presented in chocolate cookie crumb pie crust. Ice cream flavors varied; fudge ran from chocolate sauce to thick emulsion. Some recipes incorporate marshmallow or whipped cream. Others have no ice cream at all and are served warm or room temperature. "Adult" versions are laced with liqueur. Children's versions (think: Dirt dessert & Dirt cake) are a study in commercial product assmeblage. They are classically garnished with gummy worms. When & where was Mud Pie invented?

The earliest print reference we find for Mud Pie suggests it was concocted by the wife of a rising star chef based in Long Beach California, circa 1965. Early 1970s newspapers offer key references to Mud Pie recipes in readers' exhange columns and local fair contest winners. Clearly, the recipe was circulating locally among home bakers. At some point in the early-mid 1970s, the Chart House restaurant chain added Mud Pie to its dessert menu. While we can't confirm this restaurant "invented" mud pie, it certainly merits credit for elevating popularity to the national level. Upscale restaurants, foodservice operations, corporate kitchens, and home cooks embraced the mud. With all sorts of interesting results. It is true that Mud Pie recipes come from Mississippi. It is equally true they come from the West, North, East and Midwest. MacArthur Park Mud Pie celebrates the mud in San Francisco Bay. Where did the idea come from?

Likely culinary ancestors are Elizabethan-era Trifle (cream & cake), 19th century Viennese torten, 1900s double fudge brownies, 1920s Black Bottom Pie, and 1950s novelty ice cream cakes. [1965]

"Well, 'behind every successful husband there is a wife, and Sandy, the former Sandra Lee Hicks of Long Beach, did win the $5 prize for her 'Mud Pie' recipe. it's composed of chocolate cookie-crumb pastry, filled with coffee ice cream and topped with chocolate frosting."

---"Chef of the Week: Gill, a gourmand, on the go," Mildred K. Flanary, Independent-Press Telegram [Long Beach, CA] August 1, 1965 (p. W12)

[NOTE: The article profiles Don G. Gill, husband of the woman referenced above. No recipe for Mud Pie included.] [1974]

Melba Hearrell...sent recipes for Scotch shortbread (from Fannie Farmer cookbook). Mississippi mud cake and creamy potato salad."

---Readers recipe Exchange: Short Bread Recipe Comes from Scotland," Abilene Reporter-News (TX), March 7, 1974 (p. 3B)

[NOTE: Recipe not included.] [1976]

"Dear SOS: Our family loves the Mud Pie served at the Chart House. We've had the pie in Coronado, Santa Barbara and Sun Valley, Idaho. We'd love the recipe...The pie does get around. A big football player-type waiter with a mustache at the Westwood Chart House tells us that the recipe has been tossed up and down the coast and landed in Los Angeles via the Chart House. No one we have asked so far seems to know its origin, but the formula can't be more simple: chocolate wafer crust, coffee or chocolate mint...ice cream, fudge sauce and whipped cream. The pie gets its name from the fudge layer, which supposedly resembles you know what. Mud Pie

2/3 (8 1/2-ounce package) dark chocolate wafers

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1/2 gallon coffee ice cream

3/4 cup fudge sauce

Whipped cream

Toasted sliced almonds

Crush wafers and mix with softened butter. Press into a 9-inch pie plate. Chill thoroughly or bake at 350 degrees 7 minutes, then chill. Pack ice cream into chilled crust, smoothing surface. Freeze until firm. (Freezing before adding the fudge sauce is essential to keep fudge from slipping off). Pour fudge sauce evenly over the pie and freeze until ready to serve. To serve, dollop with whipped cream and sprinkle with almond slices. Note: Commercial fudge sauce is used by restaurants, but you may use your own recipe or the one given here.

Chocolate Fudge Sauce

5 squares unsweetened Swiss chocolate

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1 small can evaporated milk

3 cups unsifted confectioners' sugar

1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla

Melt the chocolate and butter. Remove form heat and mix in milk alternately with sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook and stir 8 minutes or until thickened and creamy. Remove form heat and stir in vanilla. Store in refrigerator and use as needed. Makes 3 cups.

---"Culinary SOS: A Sweetheart of a Fudge Cake," Rose Dosti, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1976 (p. G9) [1977]

"The two desserts ($1.25 each) leaves little room for choice, particularly when one is a cream cheesecake tasting strongly of condensed milk. However, a slice of mud pie can certainly be recommended. The Chart House makes it with a chocolate crumb crust filled with coffee ice cream, iced with fudge, topped with shipped cream of undetermined origin, and frozen. It arrives still frozen but begins to thaw very nicely thereafter."

---"Dining Out: California by the Hudson," Guy Henle, New York Times, September 25, 1977 (p. S26) [1981]

"We were asked recently if there was such thing as a mud pie, and we offered a vague definition from a book that spoke of a creation from Mississippi: a chocolate-cookie crust filled which chocolate or coffee-brandy ice cream. To our surprise, the printed question and answer elicited scores of recipes from all over the nation, not only from Mississippi mud pies but for mud cakes as well. Both of them, as our readers warned us, are sinfully rich. The Mississippi pie, with its emphatic chocolate flavor, may be served lukewarm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If allowed to cool, the filling becomes almost like fine chocolate candy. The following mud pie recipe is from Dorothy Ann Webb, a native Mississippian... "Dorothy Ann Webb's Mississippi mud pie

Six to eight servings

Preparation time: 20 minutes. Baking Time: 50 minutes

Pastry for a nine-inch pie...

8 tablespoons 91 stick) butter

3 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate

3 eggs

3 tablespoons white corn syrup

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Vanilla ice cream, optional

1. Line a nine-inch pie tin with pastry. Mix butter and chocolate in a saucepan. Heat gently, stirring often, until melted and blended.

2. Beat the eggs until light an frothy. Stir in the syrup, sugar and vanilla. Pour the chocolate mixture, stirring. Pour the filling tin the prepared pie tin.

3. bake at 350 degrees 35 to 40 minutes or until the top is slightly crunchy and the filling is set. Do not overcook. The filling should remain soft inside. This is best served warm with a spoon of vanilla ice cream on top, but it is excellent served at room temperature or cold. "Pastry for a nine-inch pie

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon sugar

6 tablespoons cold butter

3 to 4 tablespoons ice water

1. Put flour and sugar into the container of a food processor. Cut the butter into small bits and add to the container>

2. Start processing and gradually add the water. Add only enough water until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl."

---"What's chocolate, sinfully rich, and Southern? Mud pie, y'all," Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, New York Times News Service, Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1981 (p. W_A24A) [1982]

"Six months after The Tribune food department, conducted a survey of that allegedly deeply Southern dessert specialty, 'Mississippi Mud Pie.' Since then, my correspondents have been assuring me that there is plenty of good solid mud beyond the Mississippi-in bays, lakes and rivers in every state. One letter, however, led me to the MacArthur Park restaurant in San Francisco, that sparkling, almost Paris-style cafe filled with greenery and the sound of falling water, where the beautiful people maintain figures on gourmet natural foods. A waitress offered what she assured me as an authentic San Francisco Bay Mud Pie. it was so exceptionally good--with a quite unusual hot fudge topping--that I at once tried for the recipe. The MacArthur Park management are a charmingly secretive lot and I failed. Then I discovered that MacArthur's secret code had been broken by one of the best of San Francisco's food writers, Harvey Steinam, while working on his book, 'Great Recipes from San Francisco--Favorite Dishes from the City's Leading Restuarnats' (Tarcher, Los Angeles)."

---"Hot Fudge Poured Over a Rich Mud Pie for a Special Treat: Dessert Topped with Hot Fudge," Roy Andreis de Groot, Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1982 (p. S_A4)

[NOTE: Recipe included.] [1985]

"Mud pie is said to be the hottest dessert on restaurant menus in these trendy times. It's even more fun to make at home. Easy, too, considering that one popular version is simply mocha ice cream in a chocolate crumb crust served with lots of whipped cream and warm fudge sauce...With the adult version of mud pie, you get to crush things like Oreos, dabble in softened ice cream, sprinkle on Kahlua, stick your finger in slowly melting chocolate...There are fluffy, no-bake mud pies, and variations on the ice cream versions."

---"Trendy Mud Pie has Many Versions for All You Incurable Chocoholics," Joyce Rosencranz, Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1985 (p. F18) [1985]

Mississippi Mud Pie

1/2 (8 1/2-ounce) package chocolate wafers

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 quart coffee ice cream, softened

1 1/2 cups fudge sauce or chocolate fudge sauce ice cream toppings

Whipped cream, sliced almonds, or chocolate curls for garnish (optional)

Crush chocolate wafers and set aside. Melt butter in large frying pan over low heat. Add crushed wafers and toss in butter to coat well. Press crumb mixture into a 9-inch pie plate and allow to cool. Soften ice cream and spoon onto wafer crust. Freeze until firm. Top with cold fudge sauce. Store in freezer about 8 to 10 hours. To serve, top with whipped cream and sliced almonds or chocolate curls. Remove from freezer and allow to stand 5 to 10 minutes before service. Yield: 6 to 8 servings.--Mrs. Kenneth Kussmann, New Orleans, Louisiana."

---Vintage Vicksburg, Vicksburg [Mississippi] Jr. Auxiliary [Wimmer Companies:Memphis] 1985. [1988]

"Where did all this mud stuff start? Not many people are willing as John (Chappy) Chapman...to venture an explanation. Chapman, who grew up in New Orleans has spent all of his life in Gulf Coast towns, said mud pie was invented years ago in the Vicksburg-Natchez area...It was [mud pie]...a pre-baked pie crust filled with "a layer of [baked ] chocolate cake, a layer of chocolate pudding, another of cake, another of pudding, another of cake, topped with chocolate icing." Sometimes people added hot-fudge sauce and/or chocolate ice cream, he said."

---Mississippi Mud Pie (or Cake), Bernadette Wheeler, Newsday [New York], July 13, 1988 Food (p. 7) Dirt dessert

Our survey of historicc USA magazines and newspapers suggest recipes called "dirt cake" & "Dirt dessert" originated in the Midwest sometime in the 1980s. None of the articles we checked attribute this recipe to a particular person or food company. Nor do they reveal the story behind the name. It is plausable that "dirt cake" borrowed its moniker from another trendy rich chocolate dessert: Mud pie. Whatever the case, it was an immediate hit. Dirt cake was served at class parties, Brownie meetings, birthday parties and the like. It didn't take long for food companies to cash in on the deal. Dirt cake mixes were first marketed as packaged items in the early 1990's. The earliest mention we find of a recipe specifically called "Dirt Cake" was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette [newspaper], June 15, 1988 in a recipe exchange column. This article references a local reader who sent in a recipe for "Kansas Dirt Cake." The St. Louis Dispatch wrote an article on the topic July 24, 1989, Food section (p. 2): "Tickle Fancy With Dirt Cake." This article states "This recipe is apparently making the rounds of the area..." attesting to its popularity at that time. [1988]

Kansas Dirt Cake

1 small package of Oreo cookies

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup margarine, softened

1 cup confectioners' sugar

8-ounce carton Cool Whip

2 boxes (3 1/2 ounces each) instant vanilla pudding mix

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups milk

Crush cookies and spread half over bottom of a 9-by-13-inch pan. Mix cream cheese and margarine with electric mixer until smooth. Beat in confectioners' sugar. Then fold in Cool Whip. In separate bowl, combine pudding mix, vanilla and milk until smooth and mixture begins to thicken. Fold pudding mixture into cream cheese mixture. Spread over cookie crumbs and sprinkle remaining crumbs over top. Freeze overnight. Let sit at room temperature 5 to 10 minutes before servings.

---Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR), June 15, 1988 Napoleons

The general concensus among the food history books is that napoleons, a popular flaky pastry dessert, were not named for the famous emperor. The name is thought to be a corruption of the word "Napolitain," referring to a pastry made in the tradition of Naples, Italy. The pastry used for making napoleons is mille feuilles, literally meaning thousand leaves. While food historians place the creation of this mille feuilles in 19th century Europe, it might possibly be a descendant of filo, which was known to ancient middle eastern and Greek cooks. Filo is also composed of many layers or leaves. One of the most famous filo recipes is baklava. "Napoleons...have nothing to do with Bonaparte, the daring Corsican...The name is the result of a misunderstanding of the French word Napolitain which should have been translated as Neopolitan pertaining to Naples. They are very much like the French mille-fueille or the Italian mille foglie both of which mean a thousand leaves."

---Rare Bits: Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes, Patricial Bunning Stevens [Ohio University Press:Athens] 1998 (p.202). "Mille-Fueilles...The original cream-filled Mille-fueille or thousand leaf puff pastry was the probably creation of Careme, who may have used it as a grosse piece d'entremets to adorn a banquet table. It often goes by the name Napoleon, not out of respect for the corpulent corporal but as a corruption of Napolitain, referring to the Neapolitan manner of making sweets and ices in layers of alternating texture and color."

---The Horizon CookBook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking though the Ages, William Harlan Hale [American Heritage:New York] 1968 (p. 685). "Napolitains are large cakes which, like Breton and Savoie cakes, mille-feuilles and croquembouche, were once used to decorate elaborate buffets. In former times it was customary to place at each end of a table set for a large dinner party either and imposing decorated pastry or a heap of crayfish of other shellfish. This practice has now been abandoned; and although napolitains are still made, they are now usually small. The name of this cake suggests that it was created in Naples, but was this, in fact, the case? Or must we, as would seem more probable, ascribe its invention to Careme, who, as is generally known, at the time when he was making great set pieces, invented a certain number of large and magnificent pastries to which he himself gave the names which they bear today? It is a question to which no certain answer can be given."

---Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagne, editor [Crown:New York] 1961 (p.653). "Mille Feuilles, French for thousand leaves and a term for any of several items made from several layers of puff pastry...The invention of the form (but not of the pastry itself) is usually attribued to the Hungarian town of Szeged, and a caramel-coated mille feuilles is called Szegedinertorte. Careme, writing at the end of the 18th century, cautiously states only that it was of ancient origin...The most usual kind of mille fueilles is made of three layers of pastry baked in a rectangle shape, sandwiched with a cream filling containing nuts, or or some other cream or apricot jam, the top sprinkled with icing sugar...One particular oval type consisting of two layers joined around the edge, containing the same almond filling as gateau Pithiviers and iced with the same mixture diluted with egg white, is known in France as a "Napoleon'--probably a corruption of "Napolitain', from the Neapolitan habit of making layered confections. In the USA the name Napoleon' may be applied to any mille feuilles, and it is usually to to all kinds with royal icing."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 505) According to the food historians, filo/phyllo is of Turkish origin. One of the most popular foods made with this kind of dough is Baklava. The Careme connection?

Careme is generally regarded as the father of all modern French pastries. Ian Kelly's Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef includes a (modernized, translated) recipe for Gateau Pithvieir, attributed to Careme circa 1805 (p. 261). It is not so very different from modern Napoleons. La Varenne's French Cook (we have the English version, circa 1653 published by Southover Press c. 2001) does not offer a recipe for Napolitains. It does, however offer several general instructions for pastry making (p. 192). It also offers recipes for two layered tortes: Tourte of Franchipanne (p. 200) and Tourte of Massepin [marzipan aka almond paste] (p. 201). It is interesting to note [but not necessarily connected] that Marie-Antoine Careme [1783-1833], the famous french pastry chef who managed Tallyrand's kitchens, was a contemporary of Napoleon I [1769-1821]. Compare these recipes

[1869]

"Neapolitan Cake

Blanch, peel, wash and dry 1 lb. of Jordan almonds; pound them in a mortar, moistening them with white of egg, to prevent their turning oily; when well pounded add:

1 lb of pounded sugar

1/2 lb. of butter

1 1/4 lb. of flour

1 small pinch of salt

the grated peel of an orange;

Mix the whole to a stiffish paste, with 12 yolks of egg, and let it rest for an hour; Roll out the paste to 3/16 inch thickness; cut it out with a plain round 5 1/2-inch cutter; put the rounds obtained on baking sheets, in the oven; When of a light golden tinge, take the rounds out of the oven, and trim them with the same cutter; When the rounds are cold, lay them one above the over spreading them over alternately with apricot jam, and red currant jelly; All the pieces being stuck together, trim the outside of the cake with a knife, and spread it over with apricot jam; Roll out some twelve-turns puff paste, 1/8 inch thick; cut it into patterns with some fancy cutters; lay these patterns on a baking-sheet; dredge some fine sugar over them, and bake them in the oven, without colouring them; Decorate the top and round the cake with these puff paste patterns; and serve.

---The Royal Cookery Book, Jules Gouffe, translated from the French and adapted for English use by Alphonse Gouffe [Sampson Low, Son and Marston:London] New edition 1869 (p. 532-3) [1878]

"Neapolitainoes

Make enough puff-paste for a pie; roll out into a sheet half an inch thick, and cut into strips three inches long and half as wide. Bake in a quick oven. When cold, spread half fo them with sweet jam or jelly, and stick the others over them in pairs--the jelly being, of course, in the middle. Ice with a frosting made of the whites of two eggs, whipped stiff with a half a pound of sugar. Make these on Saturday. Pass with them strong, hot coffee, with a great spoonful of whipped cream on the surface of each cupful."

---The Dinner Year-Book, Marion Harland [Charles Scribner's Sons:New York] 1878 (p. 597-8) [1961]

"Napolitain

Ingredients. For a large napolitain: 2 1/4 cups (365 grams) blanched sweet almonds; 1 tablepsoon (12 1/2 grams) blanched bitter almonds; 1 14 cups (175 grams) fine sugar; 1/2 pound (250 grams) butter; 4 cups (500 grams) sieved cake flour; 1 3/4 cups (30 grams) sugar flavoured with lemon (or any other flavouring); a pinch of salt. Method. Pound the almonds in a mortar with a little white of egg to bind them. When the almonds are pounded to a fine paste, add the fine sugar, the flavoured sugar, the butter and flour. Pounding constantly, add as many whole eggs as are required to make a very smooth and rather stiff paste. Take this paste out of the mortar and leave to stand for a while in a cool place. Roll out the paste. Cut it into square, round or hexagonal pieces. With a pastry cutter 2 inches in diameter, cut out the middle of each piece, except for two which will serve for the top and bottom layer of cake. Bake these layers of pastry in a hot oven. When the layers are quite cold spread each one with a different fruit puree or jelly. Put the layers one on top of the other, using an uncut layer to form the base, with alternate layers of jam or jelly. Cover with the other uncut layer. When the cake is built up, coat with golden apricot jam and pipe with royal icing. Note. In former times, napolitain ckase were decorated with motifs in almond paste or flaky pastry baked without browning."

---Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagne, editor [Crown:New York] 1961 (p.653). [1972]

Napoleons-Millefueilles

For 16 pieces

Rolling out and baking the pastry

The preceding puff pastry

1 Tb softened butter

4 baking sheets, 12 by 18 inches

(Preheat oven to 450 degrees)

Roll the chilled pastry again into a rectangle; cut in half and chill one piece. Roll the remaining piece rapidly into a 13-by-9 inch rectangle 1/8 inch thick. Run cold water over a baking sheet, roll up pastry on your pin, and unroll over the baking sheet. With a knife or pastry wheel, cut off 1/2 inch of dough all around. To keep pastry from rising when baked, prick all over at 1/8-inch intervals with two forks or a rotary pastry pricker. Chill for 30 minutes to relax dough. Repeat with the second half of the pastry. Lightly butter undersides of the other baking sheets and lay one over each sheet of dough. Set in upper-and lower-middle racks of oven and bake for 5 minutes. Lift covering sheets, prick pastry again, and replace covering sheets, pressing them down on pastry. Bake 5 minutes more, then remove covering sheets to let pastry brown; if pastry begins to rise more than 1/4 inch, or starts to curl, replace coverings. Bake 18 to 20 minutes in all, or until pastry is nicely browned. Cool 5 minutes, with covering sheets, then unmold and cool on racks. (Cooled baked pastry may be frozen). Forming and cutting the Napoleons

1 cup apricot jam forced thorugh a sieve and boiled to 128 degress with 2 Tb sugar

2 cups pastry cream (see the Eighty-third Show) or stiffly beaten whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with kirsch

1 cup white fondant icing (see The Hundred and Nineteenth Show) or powdered sugar in a sieve

1 cup melted chocolate

A paper decorating cone (see The Hundred and Nineteenth Show)

Cut the baked pastry into even strips 4 inchese wide. Paint the top of each with warm apricot, and spread about 1/4 inch of pastry cream or whipped cream on two strips; mount one one top of each other, and cover with the third. Repeat with the other three strips. Spread melted fondant icing ir a 1/8-inch coating of powdered sugar on top of each. Make a cone of heavy freezer paper or foil, cut the point to make a 1/8-inch opening, and fill cone with melted chocolate. Squeeze crosswise lines of chocolate over the top of each strip, spacing lines about 3/8 inch apart. Draw the dull edge of a knife down the middle of each strip, then draw another line in the opposite direction on each side, to pull the chocolate into a decorative pattern. Let chocolate set for a few minutes, then cut the strips into crosswise pieces 2 inches wide, using a very sharp knife held upright; cut with an up-and-down sawing motion. Serving.

Arrange the Napoleons on a serving tray and chill and hour. Remove from refrigerator 20 minutes before serving, so that chocolate (and fondant) will regain their bloom. Napoleons are at their best when freshly made, though you may keep them several days under refrigeration or you may freeze them."

---The French Chef Cookbook, Julia Child [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1972 (p. 330-2) Banana cream pie

Pie is ancient. Cream, custard and pudding pies are Medieval. Bananas took the American market by storm in the 1880s, due to impoved transpotration and savvy, aggresive marketers. Late 19th/early 20th century cookbooks are full of banana recipes. Bananas adapted well to most traditional fruit recipes. Hence: banana cream pie, banana pudding, banana nut bread, banana ice cream, banana compote, banana fruit salads, banana splits, etc. About pie, custards & creams & bananas. The oldest recipes we find for banana pie in an American cookbook were published in the late 19th century. They employ sliced bananas, not banana cream/custard.

[1880]

"Banana Pie

"Slice raw bananas, add butter, sugar, allspice and vinegar, or boiled cider, or diluted jelly; bake with two crusts. Cold boiled sweet potatoes may be used instead of bananas, and are very nice."

---Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, revised and enlarged [Buckeye Publishing Company:Minneapolis MN] 1880 (p. 215) [1901]

"Banana Pie.

Fill a pie shell, already baked, with sliced bananas and powdered sugar. Put in the oven a few minutes until the fruit softens. Very nice so, but far better to cover the top with whipped cream and serve at once. Flavor with lemon juice."

---Woman's Exchange Cook Book, Mrs. Minnie Palmer [W.B. Conkey Company:Chicago] 1901 (p. 252) [1906]

Banana Cream Pie.

Line a pie pan with a crust and bake in a hot oven. When done, cover the bottom with slices of banana cut lengthwise, very thin, (Two small bananas are enough for one pie). The fill the pan with a custard made in the following manner: Two glasses of milk, two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch dissolved in a little milk, yolks of two eggs and one teaspoonful of vanilla extract. Boil in a double boiler until it thickens; then pour it into the pie crust. Cover the top with the whites of the eggs beaten stiff and slightly sweetened. Place in the oven just long enough to give it a rich brown color.---Ella N. Mitchell"

---The Blue Ribbon Cook Book, Annie R. Gregory [Monarch Book Company:Chicago] 1906 (p. 206) [1908]

"Banana Cream.

Whip half a pint of double cream until stiff and stir into it half an ounce of gelatine dissoved in half a gill of warm water, a little lemon juice and one pound of peeled bananas rubbed through a hair sieve with two ounces sugar. Put the mixture into a mould and leave it in a cool place to set."

---New York Evening Telegram Cook Book, Emma Paddock [Cupples & Leon:New York] 1908 (p. 112)

[NOTE: This recipes is found in the pastry chapter.] [1950]

"Banana Whipped Cream Pie.

Dash of salt

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

Few drops vanilla or almond flavoring

4 to 5 ripe bananas*

1 baked 9-inch pie shell

Toasted coconut.

*Use full ripe bananas...yellow peel flecked with brown

Add salt to cream and beat with rotary egg beater or electric mixer until stiff enough to hold its shape. Fold in sugar and vanilla or almond flavoring. Cover bottom of pie shell with small amount of whipped cream. Peel bananas and slice into pie shell. Cover immediately with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with toasted coconut. Makes one pie."

---Chiquita Banana's Recipe Book [United Fruit Company:1950] (p. 18)

[NOTE: This booklet also contains a recipe for Banana Chocolate Cream Pie.]

Bastilla

"Bstilla. Pronounced 'pastilla,' this is one of the Moroccan dishes said to have been brought back by the 'Moriscos'; from Andalusia after the Reconquista. 'Food of the Gods,' as it is described by the Moroccans, this magnificent pigeon pie is baked on special occasions...The pie is unusually enormous and must be baked in a gigantic tray."

---(p. 102-104)

[NOTE: Recipe is included.]

"Composed of a flaky pastry dough called warka surrounding a filling of chicken or pigeon meat, butter almonds, lemony eggs, spices and sugar, bastilla, when properly made, is considered one of the great dishes of the world. It may come in as many versions as its name, which is printed variously as b'stilla, bastila, bastia, pastila, bisteyya, bistylao and pastella (the latter name found most often on menus designated for Americans). Bastilla is believed to have begin with a Berber dish called bestila that consisted of chicken cooked in butter and flavored with saffron. The first transformation occured with the initial wave of Arabs who, along with their sweords, brought to Morocco an early form of pastry caled trid--made by stretching dough over a hot surface. When trid was combined with the Berber dish of chicken and saffron the first bastilla was born. By the time the Arabs had launched their third wave they had perfected not only their invasion techniques but their pastry. As a result, the standard bastila was transformed by adding lemony eggs, sweetened almond layers, a variety of spices, onions, cinnamon and in some cases substituting piegeon for chicken meat...Bastila is said to have originated in the Medina in Fez."

---"The Search for Morocco's Best Bastilla," Edith Marks, New York Times, May 22, 1983 (p. XX20)

"Bastila is a pigeon pie, a sumptuous, utterly rich, and magnificent preparation made for special occasions in Morocco such as holidays, weddings, or when esteemed guests arrive. The pie is surrounded by a very thin pastry leaf called warqa (which means 'leaf'), the top of which is sprinkled with powdered sugar and a latticework of ground cinnamon. Warqa pastry begins as a spongy dough that is tapped or slapped against a hot convex sheet of pounded metal, a kind of pan called tubsil set over a hot charcoal brazier, in a series of overlapping concentric circles to form a large film of pastry. This collection of leaves, now forming a whole thin sheet, is carefully but quickly peeled off the metal and set aside. Warqa pastry is a bit thinner than phyllo pastry...The name of the pigeon pie, bastila or bastal, comes from the Spanish word for pastry, pastilla, after the transformation of the phoneme 'p' into 'b' that is specific to the Arabic language...Contemporary Moroccan cuisine is essentially an Arab and Hispano-Muslim cuisine set upon the foundation of an older and simpler Berber sustenance diet, with outside influences from sub-Saharan West Africa and colonial-era France. The Arabs arrived in Morocco soon after the date of the Prophet Muhammad and continued on into Spain by the early eighth century. The Arabs and Muslimized Berbers in Spain merged with Hispano-Roman population then ruled by the Visigoths, a German military aristocracy, and they later came to be known by the historians as Hispano-Muslims and by popular writers as Moors. Between 1462 and 1615, this population emigrated to Morocco and other areas of North Africa as a result of the Christian Reconquest of Spain and governmental policies that led to the Great Expulsion of 1609-1614. ...[There is] some evidence of vestigial remain of the bastila or pastel around the Mediterranean. Perhaps the original Spanish dish migrated to Turkey with the Jews, as suggested in Claudia Roden's description of the dish called pasteles of the Turkish Jews. Patricia Smouha, the author of a Middle Eastern cookbook, also tells us of an 'old Syrian dish' called pastelis [sic], which is a pie stuffed with either fried beef, onions, and pine nuts or brains. In any case, we know that as late as the sixteenth century, Spain's King Philip II was still eating pastel. That pastelis traveled is not in doubt. Besides the evidence of the eastern Mediterranean, pastelis eventually appeared in Puerto Rican cookery stuffed with almonds, raisins, and cornmeal. There is another evidence of the Andalusian origins of and inspiration behind bastila. Andalusia had a rich court life under the Spanish branch of the Umayyad dynasty (756-1031), and the Almonhad (1130-1269) and Nasrid (1230-1492) caliphates and a concomitantly rich cuisine, whereas the Berbers did not. Pre-Islamic Berber cooking in Morocco was subsistence cooking, not cuisine. The French were making a kind of pie or cake called pastillys, a word that was transformed into gastellus, guastellus, wastellus, and gastiel--all names of different stuffed cakes that appear in texts from 1129 to 1200 in the areas of Champagne, Ile-de-France, and Picardie. It was a luxury pasty made with very fine, good-quality flour, and stuffed with meat or fish and spices and fat, corresponding to Moroccan bastila. The term crossed the English Channel, where the Scottish king William the Lion served wastelli dominici to Richard the Lion-Hearted. It also appears in yet a different guise in Sicily as guastedde or vastieddi, a kind of spleen calzone. It still appears today in Corsica as bestella, a meat-and-vegetable-filled pie pastry... Bastila is a huge pigeon pie traditional in Fez, and found throughout Morocco. One Moroccan cookbooks starts a recipe for bastila by saying that one must have a dada come to the house to prepare it. A dada is a black professional woman cook from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa employed in bourgeois and aristocratic households in Morocco to this day."

---A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A. Wright [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 294-295)

[NOTE: Modern recipe follows.]

"B'stila is widely regarded as the crowning dish of Moroccan cuisine. In Fez, the country's culinary capital, this delightful pastry is traditionally served to newlyweds the morning after their wedding night to symbolize their family's wish that their life together be as sweet as this sublime creation. The origin of b'stila remains a subject of debate among food historians. Some believe it was created by the Persians and adopted by their Arab neighbors, who popularized it during the conquest of North Africa. Other experts argue that credit fo the dish must go to the innovative cooks of Al Andus, the medieval Arabic name for Spain. Whatever its origin, today b'stila is firmly established as a quintessentially Moroccan specialty. B'stila was traditionally made with pigeon, although nowadays chicken is more commonly used. The meat is simmered in a sauce redolent of saffron, cinnamon, and ground ginger, then shredded and mixed with scrambled eggs, ground almonds, and powdered sugar to form an exquisite filling that is layered between sheets of paper-thin phyllolike dough called ouarka. A golden b'stila, just out of the oven, garnished with powdered sugar and decorated with cinnamon, never fails to elicit appreciative exclamations from around the table. A solicitous Moroccan host will quickly poke several holes in the flaky outer crust to allow some of the trapped fragrant steam to escape. He invokes be blessing 'Bismillah!' before deftly breaking off a tasty morsel and offering it to one of his honored guests....B'stila calls for a paper-thin pastry dough called ouarka, whose preparation is an art requiring considerable experience. In Morocco, it is mainly the domain of the dadas, women descended from Sudanese slaves. They are reputed for their skill at creating the translucent round leaves. These ouarka specialists sit by the hour in front of a small charcoal fire, dexterously dabbing a ball of moist, slippery dough on the hot tin-plated outside surface of a round copper pan (much like a modern upside-down crepe griddle) called a tabsil dial ouarka that rests just above the glowing coals. The tabsil is evenly covered with overlapping circles of dough. Within a minute, a leaf of transluscent ouarka as thin as onion skin is deftly peeled from the pan. Most modern Moroccan housewives purchase ready-made ouarka at their local market. Phyllo dough makes and excellent subsistute for ouarka."

---Cooking at the Kasbah, Kitty Morse [Chronicle Books:San Francisco] 1998 (p. 69, 71)

[NOTE: recipe for B'stila B'djej (Chicken B'stila) follows.]

Compare with English Shepherd's Pie.

Black bottom pie

Recipes titled "Black Bottom" surface in early 20th century. They were hailed as 'novel' in the 1920s. Modern chilled versions coincide with the introduction of "icebox" (aka refrigerator) desserts. These new desserts typically incorporated commercially prepared items. In the case of pie, standard pastry shells were replaced by crushed cookie or graham cracker crusts. As time progressed, ratio of chocolate filling to white topping flipped. Some versions introduce a layer in between. About refrigerator pie.

Food historians generally associate "Black Bottom Pie" with Southern USA cuisine. Our research confirms this is true, but not in the place most folks expect. Latitude-wise. Our survey of historic USA newspapers suggest "Black Bottom Pie" originated in southern California (Los Angeles). Variations slowly rolled eastward (via Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Florida) to the Atlantic shore where they were embraced without question. None of our Southern cookbooks published in 1930s contain "Black Bottom" recipes.

This is what the food historians say:

"'I think this is the most delicious pie I have ever eaten,' exclaimed Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in her 1942 kitchen narrative, Cross Creek Cookery...Duncan Hines, the wandering hotel and restaurant scout from Kentucky, published an almost identical black bottom pie in his Adventures in Good Cooking in the early 1940s, having found the dessert in a restaurant in Oklahoma City, but it isn't clear whether his discovery receded Mrs. Rawlings' or drew its inspiration from hers. James Beard, in his American Cookery, said black bottom pie 'began appearing in cookbooks around the turn of the century,' but he cited none; it wasn't in Fannie Farmer's magnum opus or Joy of Cooking until after Rawlings and Hines published it. But the story of its origin has been lost, the basic formula for its unique combinations of flavors is safe--and certain to remain with us. Let it suffice to say that black bottom is a Southern pie that has been spreading joy in and out of the region for close to fifty years or more."

---Southern Food, John Egerton [University of North Carolina Press:Chapel Hill] 1993 (p. 328-329)

"Certain recipes are destined to catch the public fancy and become classics, though not necessarily right away. One such recipe is Black Bottom Pie...appears not to have caught on, however, until the late 1930s when Duncan Hines, author of America's trusted Adventures in Good Eating, made note of it...Later Hines would recall Black Bottom Pie as "one of those marvelous creations that has somehow managed to keep its light under a bushel." In 1940 The Good Housekeeping Cook Book and Woman's Home Companion Cook Book both printed recipes for Black Bottom Pie...One of Black Bottom Pie's biggest fans was Floridian Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of the Yearling, who included her version of Black Bottom Pie in her Cross Creek Cookery (1942)."

---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 370)

Monroe Boston Strause "The Pie King" included an entire chapter on Black Bottom Pie in his classic book Pie Marches On. He prefaced the recipe with these headnotes: "This is without doubt the most sensational pie that has ever been introduced, and is one of the outstanding originals of the writer. Aside from being a sensation, I believe it brought the highest price that any pie ever sold at commercially; $1.90 for a nine inch pie retail, and the volume in which it sold made pie history. This pie was written up by newspapers and magazines all over the country, and on these pages the recipe is published for the first time. Those who were among the fortunate few to obtain this recipe guarded it very closely, and it is my prediction that it will be the outstanding pie in this book. The sensation was not in the pie alone, but in its design and make-up, as well as the crust beneath it. On this pie was first introduced the Graham Cracker Crust and, of course, we will start with the crust."

---Pie Marches On, Monroe Boston Strause [Ahrens Publishing:New York], 2nd edition 1951 (p. 231) [NOTES: (1) Recipe included; happy to scan or fax. (2) Mr. Strause is credited for inventing Chiffon Pie (3) We cannot absolutely confirm this recipe appeared in the original 1939 edition] Monroe Strause appears to be claiming to be the inventor of Black Bottom Pie. He was from Los Angeles. The earliest recipes we find titled "Black Bottom Pie" were published in California Newspapers. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Additional notes & citings, courtesy of Barry Popik.

A survey of recipes through time



[1928]

"Seeking inspiration for a menu to present to her cooking class, meeting this afternoon at 2 o'clock in the Times demonstration room...Mrs. Mabelle (Chef) Wyman consulted her request bulletin with the result that the entire cuisine is made up of suggested favorites. Includes are such novelties as black-bottom pie and baking-powder Parker House rolls...Recipes will be distributed at the conclusion of the lecture."

---"Class Will Get Request Menu," Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1928 (p. A5) [1929]

"Black Bottom Pie. Ask for it at Old Chelsea. Where Wonderful luncheons and dinners are served...at 4571 Melrose, near Normandie."

---"Pe