Deconstructing Pie

[Fletch]

Pie Town (no kidding), New Mexico, 1940.

(Originally posted on the Straight Dope Message Board, July 23, 2005)

Pie is a sublime treat, and has always been. But pie is not just any old treat. Can you picture anyone's eyes lighting up quite the same way when told, "Keep your fork – there's cake? ice cream? Pudding? Fruit cup? Cobbler? Parfait? Tirami sù?"

No. You can't. (All right, maybe cobbler.) But what is the deal with pie? What leads sages, poets, singers and plain folks to praise the filled, baked, and crusted viand to the heavens and associate it with home, family, and proof of a loving Supreme Being?

Well, first, pie ain't the easiest thing to make and bake. Never mind your pre-this, ready-that frozen crust-in-a-carton. It's all right to fool around with Sara Lee now and then, but you still gotta come home to mama. And mama made 'em from scratch. Flour. Rolling pin. (Yes, they were good for something besides throwing at papa when he came home wheezing Irish ballads after a night with the boys.) Shortening. (This used to mean plain old pig-hog LARD, kiddies. Mmm mmm mmm.) And like that. Dough shaped, scored, trimmed at the gun'ls and artfully fluted. Not rocket science, but plenty of old-fashioned w-o-r-k (or as mama spelled it, l-o-v-e) before you even put peeler to apple. Yes, pie had it all over Hallmark: it meant you cared enough to make the very best.

Came the 1930s and we thought we were entering Complicated Fast-Paced Modern Life with Jell-O, Minute Rice, Crisco ("which digests so easily" – my, how scientific) and its competitor Spry (after a Bulova watch, the second product ever advertised on television). But we weren't so up-to-date as all that. Pie still loomed large on the culinary landscape — a landscaped traversed tirelessly by a pie-loving gourmand who made his name writing restaurant and hotel guides under the name Duncan Hines. It would be a decade or more before Mr. Hines was rendered down to pale brownish flakes, mixed with powdered egg, and poured into boxes that made quick, easy, yummy cake. In the chrome-plated, convenience-happy baby-boom years, cake would become the new pie.

But cake is not pie. Cake is a dessert, a spongy, thickly-frosted slice o' sweetness meant for kiddy parties, Kaffeeklatsches and shmancy-fancy dinners. Pie is more substantial; pie has gravitas. You could live on pie; Jack Kerouac's protagonist in On the Road did just that on the road. Because pie, like the Earth we come from, has a crust. Like the Earth's, that crust is warm, crumbly, fragrant, nourishing. Maybe not to the waistline or the cardiovascular system — where all that shortening tends to hang around — but to those way-in-the-back taste buds that are closest to the human soul.

Pie's constituents, likewise, tend to be a few degrees less removed from the Earth than the gooey-swirly-marbly productions that go into cake. Berries, bananas, coconuts, cream. Even the vaunted rhubarb, so bitter only a pound of sugar can make it palatable, finds a home in pie. (A rhubarb cake would just sit on the table, even after a few guests tried a slice and said, "Uhhmmm...Not bad. I guess. Yes, I'd love some more coffee. Please.")

One need hardly bring up the pot, meat, chicken, spinach, or vegetable pies that literalize pie's unspoken premise of "a meal in itself" – other than to say that they are simple, homey, stick-to-your ribs cooking of the first order. Like the sweet pies once so ubiquitous at dessert or with coffee when friends came calling. Like the simple (if complex) carbohydrates of biscuits, popovers and dumplings, these things were once our ballast for living.

Most of us now alive grew up in a cake-mix, instant-pudding world, not a pie world. What was sweet to the tongue too often left the soul untouched, except perhaps for a vague, hydrogenated sheen of oily residue. Even a mediocre piece of pie doesn't quite leave that aftertaste. And a good, hot, fresh-baked forkful — why, there's nothing to compare with it.

Proust may have had his madeleine. But we've got it all over him. We've got pie.

 

[kamikat]

Oh, a man after my own heart! I did not grow up in a pie home. We're Greek and Italian. At family occasions, we had baklava, tiramisu or cake. We only had pie at Thanksgiving and only pumpkin or mincemeat. When we discovered that our youngest needed a wheat-free diet (has since outgrown allergy), pie with a packaged mix for the wheat-free crust was our only dessert option. I then learned the joys of pie. Now that we have regular flour crusts, my pies shine! My husband and older boy both ask for birthday pie (key lime for both) instead of cake. There has been much debate over the issue of fresh blueberry vs cooked blueberry pie. There is much debate over the issue of ala mode vs whipped cream. All in all, no one really cares as long as there is pie of some kind. I also wanted to bring up something you didn't mention as a benefit that pie has over cake. One can justify breakfast (leftover) pie because the fruit makes it somewhat nutritious. One can never justify breakfast (leftover) birthday cake.

 

[Queue]

Interesting look on what is, in my life, an under-appreciated dessert. Thanks!

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

I adore pie. I like to say it correctly too. Cherry pie, chocolate cream pie, banana cream pie, peach cobbler (which I reckon is just pie in a different shape; square pie), pecan pie, but not the storebought stuff with just a measly thin layer of pecans on top. Pie's alright in my book.

 

[Kid Mac]

Pie is a constant!

Mac

 

[Dexter'sDame]

Cobbler vs. Pie

Fletch, thanks for posting that ode to pie...and especially noting the time and labor involved. About once a year I bake a cherry pie from scratch, and it is, indeed "a food of love thing," to quote Emeril Lagasse. A modern food processor to make the dough shaves off only 15-20 minutes.

ThsFlishThings, the difference between pie and a cobbler is that a pie is made with a thinly rolled-out crust, whereas a cobbler is made by piling sweetened fruit in the bottom of an oblong dish and topping it with big spoonfulls or cut outs of shortcake dough or sweet biscuit dough (Southern-style biscuits, not British cookies ;-) ). The result is a thicker, cakier "crust" portion. My mom usually made cobbler, because it was a little faster and easier to make. Hope that helps!