Pie
"I like pie."
- This article is about the baked good, for other uses see Pie (disambiguation).
A pie is a baked dish, with a baked shell usually made of pastry that covers or completely contains a filling of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, creams, chocolate, custards, nuts, or other sweet or savoury ingredients. Pies can be either "one-crust," where the filling is placed in a dish and covered with a pastry/potato mash top before baking, or "two-crust," with the filling completely enclosed in the pastry shell. Some pies have only a bottom crust, generally if they have a sweet filling that does not require cooking. These bottom-crust-only pies may be known as tarts or tartlets. One example of a savoury bottom-crust-only pie is a quiche. Tarte Tatin is a one-crust fruit pie that is served upside-down, with the crust underneath. Blind-baking is used to develop a crust's crispiness, and keep it from becoming soggy under the burden of a very liquid filling. If the crust of the pie requires much more cooking than the chosen filling, it may also be blind-baked before the filling is added and then only briefly cooked or refrigerated.
Pie fillings range in size from tiny bite-size party pies or small tartlets, to single-serve pies (e.g. a pasty) and larger pies baked in a dish and eaten by the slice. The type of pastry used depends on the filling. It may be either a butter-rich flaky or puff pastry, a sturdy shortcrust pastry, or, in the case of savoury pies, a hot water crust pastry.
Occasionally the term pie is used to refer to otherwise unrelated confections containing a sweet or savoury filling, such as Eskimo pie or moon pie.
Regional variations
Pies with fillings such as pork, steak and kidney, minced beef and onion, or chicken and mushroom are also popular in the United Kingdom as take-away snacks. They are also served with chips as an alternative to fish and chips at British chip shops. The residents of Wigan are so renowned for their preference for this food-stuff that they are often referred to as "Pie Eaters" (though the historical reasons for this title are disputed). In honour of this, the main ingredient of a 'Wigan kebab' is the pie, which is placed in a barm cake to make up the locally popular delicacy. Shepherd's pie is also a favourite amongst people throughout Britain.
Pies with sweet fillings may be served with a scoop of ice cream, in a style known in North America as à la mode.
The Australian meat pie, beef and gravy in a shortcrust piecase, often with a flakey top, has an iconic cultural status, being held to be the Australian National Food. The many different types of small commercially-produced pies are popular forms of takeaway food in Australia and New Zealand, with one of the most widespread brands in Australia being Four'N'Twenty. Many bakeries and specialty stores sell gourmet pies for the more discriminating customer. A peculiarity of Adelaide cuisine is the Pie floater.
History
The pie has been around since the ancient Egyptians from 2000 B.C. At some point between 1400 B.C. (Greek settlements) and 600 B.C. (the decline of Egypt) the pie is believed to have passed on to the Greeks by the Egyptians.
From Greece the pie spread to Rome, somewhere around 100 B.C. by which time pies had already been around for some 1000 years. The first known pie recipe came from the Romans and was for a rye-crusted goat cheese and honey pie.
Pies appeared in England in the 12th century and were predominantly meat pies. The crust of the pie was referred to as the “coffyn” and there was generally more crust than filling. Sometimes these pies were made with fowl and the legs were left outside the pie to act as handles. For a long time the pastry crust was actually not eaten, serving only to preserve the moisture and flavour of the filling.
A French chef named Guillaume Tirel produced a cookery book in the 14th Century that included a recipe for marinated and sautéed eel which was used for the Christian Lent period when it was forbidden to eat meat.
Pies went to America with the first English settlers. As in Roman times the early American pie crusts were not eaten, but simply designed to hold the filling. Today, virtually every country in the world has some form of pie.
Pie in popular culture
Cream filled or topped pies are favourite props for humour, particularly when aimed at the pompous. Throwing a pie in a person's face has been a staple of film comedy since the early days of the medium, and real life pranksters have taken to targeting politicians and celebrities with their pies, an act called pieing. Activists sometimes engage in the pieing of political and social targets as well. One such group is the Biotic Baking Brigade. "Pieing" can result in injury to the target and assault or more serious charges against the pie throwers [1]. In Des Moines, Iowa, in 1977, singer and anti-gay-rights activist Anita Bryant became one of the first persons to be "pied" as a political act. See List of people who have been pied.
Pie is regularly referenced in many contexts, often to inexplicably humorous ends. Pie itself may be an inherently funny word, or it may be that it is the thought of actual pie which adds humour to a situation. In any case, the following are but a few of the innumerable pop culture references to pie:
- In British culture, a person who is overweight is often subject to the chant of, "Who Ate All the Pies?", also denizens of Wigan are also known as, 'pie eaters'.
- Garrison Keillor's radio show A Prairie Home Companion regularly thanks a fictional sponsor named Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie, which supposedly sells frozen rhubarb pies.
- In the popular American comedy film American Pie, one character describes the vagina as feeling like "Warm apple pie." This makes the main character, Jim, played by Jason Biggs, succumb to the temptation of having sex with a pie, and he embarrassingly gets caught in the act. The use of "pie" as a metaphor for female genitalia is also featured in the song "Cherry Pie", performed by band Warrant, and featured on their album of the same name.
Savoury pies
Not all of these savoury pies are actually pies: for example, shepherds' pie and many styles of pizza pie are pies in name only.
Sweet pies
Some of these pies are pies in name only, such as the Boston cream pie, which is a cake.
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Pie à la mode is a pie (traditionally an apple pie) with a scoop of ice cream on top. The name of the pie was invented in mid-1890s in the United States.
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