About pie pastry pie crust puff paste Apple pie Apple Crisp & Apple Betty Baklava/filo Boston cream pie Calzones Cape Breton pork pies Chess pie (aka sugar pie) Cheshire pie

Chiffon pie Cobbler Cream puffs Eclairs Empanadas Gateau Saint Honore Grasshopper Key lime pie Lemon meringue pie Mincemeat and mince pies Mock apple pie Mud pie Napoleons Palmiers (aka Elephant Ears)

Pasties Pecan pie Pizza Pork pies Pot pie Pumpkin pie Quiche Refrigerator Pie Sawdust pie Shepherd's pie Shoofly pie Sweet potato pie Tart Tatin Tarts Turnovers

Have questions? Ask!

Pie--the filling and baking of sweet (fruits, nuts, cheese) or savory (meat, fish, eggs, cheese) ingredients and spices in casings composed of flour, fat, and water is an ancient practice. The basic concept of pies and tarts has changed little throughout the ages. Cooking methods (baked or fried in ancient hearths, portable colonial/pioneer Dutch ovens, modern ovens), pastry composition (flat bread, flour/fat/water crusts, puff paste, milles feuilles), and cultural preference (pita, pizza, quiche, shepherd's, lemon meringue, classic apple, chocolate pudding?) All figure prominently into the complicated history of this particular genre of food.

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!

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.

"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....Early pies were large; but one can now apply the name to something small, as the small pork pies or mutton pies...Early pies had pastry tops, but modern pies may have a topping of something else...or even be topless. 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."
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 602-3)

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 Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004 (p. 272)

Recommended reading:

• Pie: A Global History/Janet Clarkson (book)
• About pies in America, Alice Ross

• 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.

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.

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)

Pie crusts, Alice Ross

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)

Recipes for apple pie (along with apples!) were brought to America by early European settlers. These recipes date back to Medieval times. Here is a sample from English cooking text circa 1381: 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 Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004 (p. 43)

About apple pie , Alice Ross Journal of Antiques (includes notes on pie tins)

Most apple varieties originated in the Middle East. The fruit was introduced to Europe by the Roman legions. They were actively cultivated. Apples are considered one of America's symbols because they are prominently featured in recipes throughout our nation's history. About apples:

"The Romans introduced new economic plants. They had already developed several apple varieties, with fruits smaller than those of today but larger and sweeter than those borne by Britain's indigenous wild crabs...Their apple varieties included types for good keeping, and villa owers stored them spread out in rows in a dry, well-ventilated loft...Apples were sliced into two or three pieces with a red or bone knife (since metal stained the fruit), and were put to lie in the sun."(p. 325-6)..."One of the earliest named apples was the pearmain, recorded soon after 1200. The copstard, a very large apple, was popular from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It was sold in the streets fo London by costermongers...By the fifteenth century pippins, pomewaters, bittersweets and blanderelles had become fashionable apple varieties. Several of the medieval apples were good keeping types; indeed, apples were preferred when they had been kept awhile and allowed to mellow." (p. 330-1)...Apples were pulped in the mortar and then put into tarts." (p. 334)
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 325-6)

"Apple. There were no native American apples when the first settlers arrived on these shores..The first apple seeds were brought by the Pilgrims in 1620, and there were plantings in New Jersey as of 1632...In 1730 the first commercial apple nursery was opened on New York's Long Island, and by 1741 applese were being shipped to the West Indies. The proliferation of the fruit into the western territories came by the hand of John Chapman, affectionately known as Johnny Appleseed. Born in Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1774, Chapman left his father's carpentry shop to explore the new territories...Apples were introduced to the Northwest by Captain Aemilius Simmons, who planted seeds at Fort Vancouver in Washington in 1824..."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 8)

RECOMMENDED READING ABOUT APPLES:

• Apples: History, Folklore, Horticultures, and Gastronomy, Peter Wynne
• Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas
• Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani
• History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith

"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."]

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?
Contrary to popular opinion, this dessert was not invented by Nabisco. Imitation apple pies made with soda crackers were the pride of thrifty 19th century American cooks. Nabisco introduced its Ritz Cracker version in 1935, on year after the product was introduced to the American public. It was an immediate hit.

"This recipe was all the rage when it first appeared in the 30s and remains popular in deepest heartland. To my great surprise, in leafing through late-nineteenth-century cookbooks, I found this Mock Apple Pie in Mrs. Hill's Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book [1872]

One large grated lemon, three large soda crackers, two even tablespoons of butter, two teacups of sugar, one egg, a wineglass of water poured over the crackers. These will make two pies, baked with two crusts.

[1863]
APPLE PIE WITHOUT APPLES.--
To one small bowl of crackers, that have been soaked until no hard parts remain, add one teaspoonful of tartaric acid, sweeten to your taste, add some butter, and a very little nutmeg."
Confederate Receipt Book

[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)

[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 applepie. Try it, please. Old Housekeeper."
---"Household Department," Boston Daily, September 24, 1903 (p. 9)

[2009]
Ritz Mock Apple Pie

About soda crackers & Ritz Crackers.

Related food? Apple cider

Tasty combinations of apples, spices, sweeteners and dough were known to ancient cooks. Medieval Europeans used apples frequently. They also perfected pie. When they settled in the New World, they brought their pie recipes (and apples, cinnamon, sugar, oats & wheat, butter, etc.) with them. Apple crisp (apple betty, apple slump, apple grunt, apple cobbler, apple pot pie, fried apple pies, apple pudding, apple pandowdy) descends from this culinary tradition.

Food historians generally place apple crisp-type recipes (& other "non-traditional fruit pie variations such as cobbler) in the 19th century. Coobook authors of these times note these recipes were regarded as quick family dishes, not meant for company or holidays. Certainly, pioneers traveling west would have found apple crisp (made with dried apples) a quick and delicious alternative to more complicated desserts. Recipes for these items were listed under several different names. The name "apple crisp" appears to be a 20th century name.

About apple pie & fruit cobbler.

What is Apple Crisp/Brown Betty?
"Apple brown betty. A layered dessert of apples and buttered crumbs. The origin of the name is unknown, but the dish was first mentioned in print in 1864. It is also called "apple crisp" and "apple crust."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 10)

About 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 lice 6 apples and combine with one c(up). sugar, 1 t(easpoon) cinnamon, and 1/2 c. water in a suacepan. 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)

Survey of recipes through time:

[1853]
"Swiss Pudding.
Lay alternately in a baking dish slices of ncie 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.]

[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)

[1908]
"Apple Slump
Apple slump is another od 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, usiung 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)

[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 [Harcout Brace and Company:New York] 1924 (p. 239)

[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)

Related foods? Mille feuille & 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)

About filo: 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 turining 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)

Other recipes similar to Boston cream pie

• Custard cakes, Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book, Mrs. M.E. Porter [1879]
• Custard or cream cake, White House Cook Book, Mrs. F. L. Gillette [1887]
• Cream Pie & Washingon Pie, Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Fannie Farmer [1896]

About cheesecake and custard.

"The Southern chess pie carries and old--even ancient--tradition of puddings and pastries with the rich texture of cheese. "Chess" is probably derived from the word "cheese," although various other theories have arisen about the origin of the name. Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks, author of North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery, says it is "an old, old tart which may have obtained its name from the town of Chester, England." Others believe that "chess" is a corruption of the world "chest" (as in a pie chest) where pies are often kept. Then there is the story about the cook who was asked what she put in the pie, and she replied, "Anything in our chest." Or the one who was asked about the kind of pie. The answer was "Oh, jes' pie." The cheese etymology seems the most likely one, because in old cookbooks, cheesecakes and pies that were sometimes made with cheese sometimes without (referring to cheese in the textural sense--lemon card, for example, is often referred to as lemon cheese), are often included in a single category. A selection of cheeseless "cheese" pastries in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) are made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, and lemon juice--very much like chess pie filling. Sometimes called "Cheesecake Pudding" (the filling is made of yolks, brown sugar, butter, nutmeg, and brandy or rum) is baked in a crust in small tins..."
---Around the Southern Table, Sarah Belk [Simon and Schuster:New York] 1991 (p. 367-8)
[NOTE: this author observes "sugar pies" were chess pies made with white sugar, "brown sugar pies" were the same recipe made with brown sugar and "Osgood" pies included raisins.]

"Chess pie is the classic Southern pastry, rich, sweet, and intense. The name is a corruption of cheese, for in the British culinary tradition eggs and cheese share the same terminology...The Oxford English Dictionary says a cheesecake is "a cake or tart of light pastry, orginally containing cheese; now filled with a yellow butterlike compound of milk-curds, sugar, and butter, or a preparation of whipped egg and sugar." The Southern version is the latter...The classic chess pie is pointed up with vanilla and/or nutmeg. Lemon chess, perhaps the favorite, receive just enough citrus flavor to name, but not dominate, the custard...Variations on the chess theme are Brown Sugar Pie, and with nuts, Pecan Pie."
---Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, Bill Neal [Knopf:New York] 1996 (p. 262)

About lemons

Cheeseless cheescake & chess pie recipes through time

[17th century]
"To make very good chee[secakes without] cheese curd
Take a quart of cream, & when it boyles take 14 eggs; If they be very yallow take out 2 or 3 of the youlks; put them into [the] cream when it boyles & keep it with continuall stirring till it be thick like curd. [Then] put into it sugar & currans, of each halfe a pound; ye currans must first be plumpt in faire water; then take a pound of butter & put into the curd a quarter of [that] butter; [then] take a quart of fine flowre, & put [the] resto of [the] butter to it in little bits, with 4 or 5 spoonsfulls of faire water, make [the] paste of it & when it is well mingled beat it on a table & soe roule it out.. Then put [the] curd into [the] paste, first putting therein 2 nutmeggs slyced, a little salt, & a little rosewater; [the] eggs must be well beaten before you put them in; & for [your] paste you may make them up into what fashion you please..."
---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press:New York] 1995 (p. 130-1)

[1653]
To Make Cheese-Cakes
---A True Gentlewoman's Delight [England]

[1747]
"To make Lemon Cheesecakes
Take the Peel of two large Leons, boil it very tender, then pound it well in a Mortar, with a quarter of a Pound or more of Laf-sugar, the Yolks of six Eggs, and a half a Pound of fresh Butter; pound a mix all well together, lay a Puff-paste in your Patty-pans, and fil them half full, and bake them. Orange Cheesecakes are don the same Way, only you boil the Peel in tow or three Waters, to take out the Bitterness."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse, Facsimile edition [Prospect Books:Devon England] 1995 (p. 142)

[1803]
Cheesecakes without rennet
---The Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter [G.R. Waite:New York] (p. 157)
[NOTE: see next page for "Potato and Lemon Cheesesake."]

[1871]
"Lemon cheesecake
Three ounces of butter, half a pound of loaf sugar, three eggs, leaving out the whites of two, the grated rind and juice of one large lemon; boil it till the sugar is dissolved and it becomes the consistence of honey; line the pan with egg-paste, in the above mixture, and bake in a quick oven."
---Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book, Mrs. M. E. Porter, Introduction and Suggested Recipes by Louis Szathmary [Promontory Press:New York] 1974 (p. 189)

[1877]
Chess pie
---Buckeye Cookery, Estelle Woods Wilcox [Buckeye Publishers:Minneapolis] (p. 187)

[1879]
"Lemon Cheese Cake
Yolks of sixteen eggs, one pound sugar, three-quarters pound butter, four lemons, boiling rinds twice before using, two tablespoonfuls powdered cracker. Bake in paste. --Mrs. Dr. E.
---Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Marion Cabell Tyree [John P. Morton:Louisville KY] 1879 (p. 414)

[1884]
Chess pie
---Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln [Roberts Brothers:Boston] (p. 324-5)

[1928]
"Janet's Chess Pie
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
3 egg yolks and 1 white
3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
Cream butter and sugar as if for one cake. Add egg yolks and 1 white and beat until foamy; add water and flavoring, again beating until well mixed. Pour this into pan lined with raw pastry and cook..."Southern Cooking, Mrs. S.R. Dull [Grosset & Dunlap:New York] 1928 (p. 188)

Related food? Shoofly pie (based on brown sugar & molasses).

Cobbler is an amalgam of European tradition and American ingenuity. According to the food historians, cobbler (peach, apple, plum, cherrry, etc.) originated in the American West during the second half of the 19th century. It was a deep-dish thick, quick crust filled with whatever fruit (fresh, canned, dried) was on hand. Necessity required westward-bound pioneer cooks to adapt traditional oven-baked pie recipes to quick biscuit treats that could be cooked in Dutch ovens. Pot pie is a closely related recipe.

Why call it cobbler?
Our dictionaries, word history books and food history reference sources generally agree the term cobbler, as it applies to a fruit dessert covered with rough biscuit dough, originated in the American west in the middle of the 19th century. Where did the name come from? Most of our books simply state "source unknown." The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology/Barnhart adds: "A kind of pie baked in a deep dish,. 1859, American English, but perhaps ultimately related to, or even developed from unrecorded use of cobeler, n. 1385, a kind of wooden bowl or dish." (p. 184)

In the absence of documented evidence, educated guesses may be constructed. It is possible the name derived from the look of the final product. Cob/cobble/cobber convey many meanings in the English language. Elizabeth David (English Bread and Yeast Cookery)tells us traditional English "cob" bread was small, brown and round. Similar, perhaps to cobbletones. Perhaps this is what the the first cobbler resembled?

While American dictionaries date the first print instance of the term "cobbler" in 1859, Nancy Baggett (fellow IACP member and cookbook author) recently located this older reference. Proving? Culinary history sleuthing is often the result of careful reading and research.

[1839]
"A Peach Pot-Pie.
A Peach pot pie, or cobler, as it is often termed, should be made of clingstone peaches, that are very ripe, and then pared and sliced from the stones. Prepare a pot or oven with paste, as directed for the apple pot-pie, put in the prepared peaches, sprinkle on a large handful of brown sugar, pour in plenty of water to cook the peaches without burning them, though there should be but very little liquor or syrup when the pie is done. Put a paste over the top, and bake it with moderate heat, raising the lid occasionally, to see how it is baking. When the crust is brown, and the peaches very soft, invert the crust on a large dish, put the peaches evenly on, and grate loaf sugar thickly over it. Eat it warm or cold. Although it is not a fashionable pie for company, it is very excellent for family use, with cold sweet milk." ---the Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, facsimile reprint of 1839 edition stereotyped by Shepard & Stearns:Cincinnati [Image Graphics:Paducah KY] (p. 268)

The Dictionary of Americanisms traces the first instance of the word cobbler (as it applies to a pie dish) in print to 1859: "Cobbler...a sort of pie, baked in a pot lined with dough of great thickness, upon which fruit is placed."

"Another kind of cobbler is a western- deep-dish pie with a thick crust and a fruit filling. This dish is called bird's nest pudding or crow's nest pudding in New England; it is served with a custard by no topping in Connecticut, with maple sugar in Massachusetts, and with a sour sauce in Vermont."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 87)

"Cobbler, also cobbler pie: A deep-dish fruit pie with crust, often biscuit dough, on the top and sometimes lining the pan. Chiefly South, South Middle (parts of the United States.)."
---Dictionary of American Regional English, Frederic G. Cassidy, editor, [Belknap Press:Cambridge MA: 1985] Volume 1 (p. 704)
[NOTE: This book has a map of where cobbler is popular.]

[1877]
Plum cobbler
[NOTE: the end of this recipe references peaches, both canned and fresh.]

Food historians generally agree Gateau Saint Honore belongs to Paris (because St. Honore is the patron Saint of patisserie and has a street name in Paris after him), but are collectively vague regarding the period. Neither do they attibute the creation of this confection to a specific chef or agree on the history behind the name. Chiboust (for whom the creme used in this recipe was named) was a mid-19th century patissiere. Quite the mystery, yes?

The ingredients and method of Gateau Saint Honore date the possibility of this recipe to the 17th century. Primary evidence confirms master Parisian patissieres often employed choux and cream to effect grand dessert presentations. Croquant was "invented" at this time. Chantilly creme (sometimes referred to as Chiboust) was also "invented" in the 17th century. We find nothing close to Saint Honore in La Varenne [1651], but Ude's French Cook [1828] contains several recipes which might been precursors. These are generally composed of choux artfully arranged and filled with chantilly cream. Unlike Gateau Saint Honore, however, do not employ shortcrust.

Escoffier [1903] contains a recipe for Creme a Saint-Honore (#4345), but not (at least that we can find) Gateau Saint Honore. Neither does it show up in Richardin [1913]. The original edition of Larousse Gastronomique [1938] includes both description and recipe (en Francais, we can send if you like).

ABOUT GATEAU SAINT HONORE

Gateau Saint Honore, a confection of two kinds of pastry with a cream filling. Shortcrust pastry provides a firm base for the soft and flexible choux pastry piled round it on top. Glazed profiteroles are stuck to the ring of choux. The centre of the ring is filled with a creamy mixture (creme chiboust) stiffened with gelatin and lightened with stiffly beaten egg whites. This cake is sometimes said to have been named after St. Honore, the patron saint of bakers, but others say that it owes its name to the rue Saint-Honore in Paris, where it was created (possibly as a development of some existing product) in 1846 by a patissiere, Chiboust. The learned authors of the Ile-de-France volume listed under IPCF (1993) explain why they regard the matter as an unsolved mystery."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 333)
[NOTE: Mr. Davidson's reference to IPCF (1993) refers to Inventaire du Patrimoine Culinare de la France, 27 volumes published between 1992-2000. The Ile-de-France contains the information on gateau St. Honore. We don't have ready access to this volume, but your librarian may be able to locate/borrow a copy.]

"Saint Honore, a gateau consisting of a layer of shortcrust pastry (basic pie dough) or puff pastry on top of which is arranged a crown of choux pastry, which is itself garnished with small choux glazed with caramel. The inside of the crown is filled with Chiboust cream (also known as Saint Honore cream') or Chantilly cream. A Parisian gateau, Saint Honore takes its name from the patron saint of bakers and pastrycooks. It is also said that its name comes from the fact that the pastrycook Chiboust, who create the cream which is used in it, set himself up in the Rue Saint-Honore in Paris."
--- Larousse Gastronomique, Completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] (p. 1016)

About pastry
---includes notes on shortcrust, puff paste, choux, and profiteroles

Certainly, such a popular pie would have much available in the way of history. Not! Food historians confirm the popularity of limes (a gift from 16th century Spanish explorers), presence of pies (an "Old World" recipe), and eager acceptance of condensed milk (mid-19th century). Presumably, the "inspiration" for Key Lime pie is Lemon meringue.

"According to John Egerton (Southern Food, 1987), Key Lime Pie was known in the Florida Keys "as far back as the 1890s." It don't doubt it a bit because in those pre-refrigerator days, fresh milk was a poor keeper. What local cooks had learned to rely on was the sweetened condensed milk Gail Borden had begun canning shortly before the Civil War."
---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 377)
[NOTE: This book has a recipe for Key Lime Pie.]

"Key lime pies were first made in the Keys in the 1850s. Jean A. Voltz, in The Flavor of the South (1977), explains that the recipe developed with the advent of sweetened condensed milk in 1856. Since there were few cows on the Keys, the new canned milk was welcomed by the residents and introduced into a pie made with lime juice. The original pies were made with a pastry crust, but a crust made from graham crackers later became popular and today is a matter of preference, as is the choice between whipped cream and meringue toppings. There are three recipes for Key lime pie in The Key West Cook Book (1949), only one of which refers to a graham-cracker crust, and two of which do not require the pie to be baked. One has no topping, one whipped cream, and one meringue."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 184)

Here are the 1949 recipes referenced above:

"Key Lime Pie
4 eggs
1 can condensed milk
1/2 cup lime juice
Break eggs in bowl and beat lightly. Add condensed milk and beat until well blended. Add lime juice slowly mixing well. Custard will thicken as you add lime juice. Pour into baked pie shell and top with meringue. Bake in slow oven until brown.

Meringue
Beat whites of 2 eggs unitl stiffl. Add 3 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder beating constantly. Put on custard and brown.--Eva Navarro (Mrs. Dan Navarro)."

"Key Lime Ice Box Pie
1/3 cold water
1/2 tablespoon gelatine
4 eggs
3 tablespoons lime juice or more. (Lemon juice and 1/3 lemon rind may be used)
1 cup whipped cream
1 cup granulated sugar
few grains salt
Set gelatine to soak in 1/3 cup water. Place egg yolks, lime juice, and 1/2 cup sugar in round bottom bowl. Place over water kept at boiling point, whipping until it cooks firm and creamy.Remove from stove and fold in gelatine. When cook add stiffly beaten egg whites which have been combined with other 1/2 cup sugar. Our into large baked pastry and set in ice box for 2 hours or more. Whip cream & spread over top of pie.--Annie Hicks.

Heavenly Lime Pie
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. Cream of Tartar
4 eggs separated
3 tbsps. Lime juice
1/8 tsp salt
1 pint Whipping cream.
Sift one cup sugar and cream of tartar. Beat egg whites stiff and gradually add sugar. Beat until thoroughly blended. Grease lightly 1 deep 9" or 10" pie pan. Spread above mixture into pan but do not spread too close to rim of pan. Bake in middle of oven for 1 hour at 275 degrees F. Cool. Beat egg yolks slightly with 1/2 cup sugar, lime juice and salt. Taste for tartness. Cook over boiling water until very thick. Cool. Whip cream and fold half of it into the thick lemon mixture. Spread in shell. Spread remaining cream over top. Chill 12 hours or more. Serves 8. --Mrs. B.C. Moreno."

"Lime Pie Supreme
(4 large pies)
1 pound butter
4 cups sugar
2 dozen eggs
Juice of 15 to 18 limes, to taste.
Cream butter and sugar and add eggs one at a time, reserving the whites of 12 for meringue. Beat, smooth and add the juice of the limes to desired tartness. Place mixture in pie shells which have been slightly browned, and bake at 400 degrees till filling is firm. Heap with meringue, and return to oven till meringue is brown.--Mrs. John B. Hayes"

"Fluffyruffle Lime Pie
4 eggs
4 tablespoons sugar
Grated rind and juice of 2 small limes
Beat sugar and yolks of eggs together, add juice and grated rind. Cook in double boiler until thick. Remove from fire, fold in whites, stiffly beaten, to which you have added 3 tablespoons sugar. Pile lightly in baked pie shell, chill and serve..--Mrs. John Wardlow"
---Key West Cook Book, Woman's Club, Key West Florida [1949] (p. 215-218)

About consensed milk About Key (Mexican) limes

Frozen lime pie is an interation of Key lime pie. The oldest mention we find in print for the frozen pie implies the recipe existed at least as early as the 1970s. Of course, most recipes exist long before they appear in print.

"Mabel Brotzman asked for help in finding a lost recipe for a Key Lime Pie that can be frozen for serving later. We received dozens of replies from readers. Marcia H. Kenward said she'd clipped the recipe from The Miami Herald "at least 30 years ago." That recipe calls for stirring in 1 to 2 drops of green food coloring if desired. As Dot Schuck of Key Largo puts it: "Most folks from up North think Key lime should be green." The vintage recipe calls for separated eggs in the filling, which makes it more involved but airier in texture. The more popular recipe, at least as far as our mail indicates, is made with frozen whipped topping. Barbara Bliss sent her boyfriend Dave's incredibly easy recipe, which is similar to many we received. Tips: If you are making your own graham cracker crust, try brushing egg white on the top just before baking to keep the crust crisp. Remove the pie from the freezer no more than 5 minutes before serving. Paula Prouty of Key West and Scarborough, Maine, where she is a newspaper food editor, simply makes a regular Key lime pie, with a meringue top, and then freezes it.

Dave's Frozen Key Lime Pie
2 graham cracker pie crusts
8 ounces Key lime juice
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2 8-ounce tubs frozen whipped topping, defrosted
Bake pie crusts following package instructions and cool. Beat together the Key lime juice and condensed milk. Fold in 1 tub of the whipped topping. Divide filling into the 2 crusts. Top both pies with the remaining frozen whipped topping. Chill, or freeze as desired. Makes 2 pies, 16 servings. Per serving: 338 calories (40 percent from fat), 15 g fat (8.1 g saturated), 11.3 mg cholesterol, 4 g protein, 45.4 g carbohydrates, 0.5 g fiber, 214 mg sodium.

Vintage Frozen Key Lime Pie
2 eggs, separated
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lime juice
1 teaspoon grated lime zest (if desired)
1/2 cup sugar
1 graham cracker pie crust
Beat egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored. Combine with sweetened condensed milk. Stir in lime juice and zest, stirring until mixture thickens. Beat egg whites until they stand in soft peaks. Gradually add sugar and continue beating just until mixture stands in firm peaks. Do not overbeat. Fold egg whites into lime mixture. Pour into crust and freeze six hours or overnight. Makes 8 servings. Per serving: 431 calories (30 percent from fat), 14.5 g fat (5.6 g saturated), 75.8 mg cholesterol, 8.2 g protein, 69.4 g carbohydrates, 0.5 g fiber, 271 mg sodium.

According to the food historians, lemon flavored custards, puddings and pies have been enjoyed since Medieval times. While Renaissance European cooks used whisked egg-whites in several dishes, it was not until the 17th century that they perfected meringue. Lemon meringue pie, as we know it today, is a 19th century product.

ABOUT LEMON COOKERY
Lemons (and other citrus fruits) were known to ancient cooks. According to the food historians, their acid flavor was appreciated and incorporated into many dishes. These fruits were expensive and usually preserved (dried) then used in cakes reserved for special occasions. Fruitcake, great bride's cake, Gallette du Roi are examples. The lemon cakes we know today trace their roots to Medieval European cooks. These cooks often used "perfumed waters" (such as rosewater) to flavor their foods and for medicial purposes. Recipes for these "perfumes" were later employed to make fruit flavorings. Orange water (aka orangeflower water) was popular in France during the seventeenth century. Culinary evidence confirms cakes, cookies, puddings, cheesecakes, tarts, jellies, and other sweet desserts often incorporated orange flavoring. Lemon recipes followed, often as a simple ingredent substitition for oranges. 18th century English cookbooks list lemon cakes as a recipe variation for Orange Cakes (Mrs. Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper [1769]. By the 19th century, lemon cakes were standard fare in American cookbooks. Sample recipe here (1877).

ABOUT LEMONS

"Lemon The fruit of Citrus medica, a tree whose original home may have been in the north of India. It only reached the Mediterranean towards the end of the 1st century AD, whemn the Romans discovered a direct sea route from the sourthern end of the Red Sea to India. Tolkowsky...adduces complex arguments in favour of this view (as against the earlier view that the lemon did not arrive until the 10th century), and refers to frescos found at Pompeii (and therefore prior to AD 70) which show what he regards as indisputably lemons; also a mosaic pavement probably from Tusculum...of about 100 AD in which a lemon is shown with an orange and a citron. Thus the fruit which can reasonably be regarded as the most important for European cookery was a comparatively late arrival. Nor was its use in cookery, as an acid element, appreciated at once. Nor, indeed, was there a Latin word for lemon. It seems likely that in classical Rome the fruit was treated as a curiosity and a decoration, and that lemon trees were not grown in Italy until later. The Arabs seem to have been largely responsible for the spread of lemon cultivation in the Mediterranean region...Arab traders also spread the lemon eastward to China...During the Middle Ages lemons were rare and expensive in N. Europe, and available only to the rich...Lemons reached the New World...in 1493, when Columbus, on his second voyage, established a settlement on Haiti."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 449)
[NOTE: this book has much more information on the history of lemons than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy of this book.]

"The lemon...owes its name entirely to the botanists, for it was unkown to classical writers. However, it was widely used from the Middle Ages onwards. It was regarded as an essential in the seventeenth century...Originally from the foothills of the Kashmir, the lemon did not reach China...until around 1900BC. In China, it was given the name limung, which it retained almost unchanged when it moved on to Persia and Media. From the tenth century AD onwards the Arabs, who called it li mum...took it all around the Mediterranean basin, eastwards to Greece by way of Constantinople, westwards to Spain by way of Maghreb and Fezzan. The Spanish and Russians retained the name limon, which becomes lemon in English..."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 662)

"Lemons were one of the most sought after fruits in early modern Europe. Being associated with sunny southern Europe they were considered healthy, much the same way we think of Mediterranean foods today. Their juice was used as a condiment, especially on fish because its acidity was thought to cut thorugh the "gluey humors" abounding in seafood, making them more digestible. Northern Europeans generally had to import lemons, but eventually a way to grow them indoors was devised. Lemon peel, grated or candied lemon was also a typical garnish."
---Food in Early Modern Europe, Ken Albala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2003 (p. 51-2)

"Lemons and scurvy
In the eighteenth century and earlier, citrus juices were among many articles of diet used in attempts to find a cure for scurvy...Lemon juice was favored by the early Spanish explorers as an antiscorbutic, and Dutch and English voyagers also included it in their ships' stores, although it was more likely to find a place among the medicines than as a regular article of diet....Captain Cook...was supplied with lemon juice as a concentrated syrup, with most of the vitamin C unwittingly boiled out in the preparation..."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 Volume 1 (p. 704)

Lemons, Fruits of Warm Climates/Morton

About lemons in 19th century America

"Legend has it that Columbus brought lemon seeds to Florida, and Spanish friars grew the fruit in California, where it flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century--especially in Eureka (possibly first cultivated in California or brought from Sicily)...In 1874 James W. Parkinson, writing of American dishes at the Philadelphia Centennial, noted that "citron"...a lemon-like fruit, had "lately been transplanted in California..." In 1934 Irvin Swartzberg of Chicago began selling gallon bottles of fresh lemon juice to bars and restaurants, and, after perfecting a method of concentrating the juice with water, sold the prdouct in the market under the name Puritan-ReaLemon."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 182)

Grocer's notes, circa 1883

"Lemon.--The fruit of a tree closely related to the orange, citron and lime...The lemon grows wild in the north of India and has been long cultivated among the Arabs who carried its culture into Europe and Africa. It is now naturalized in the West Indies and other parts of tropical America...The pulp of the fruit abounds in citric acid. There is, however, a variety cultivated in the south of Europe, the juice of which is very sweet. The acid juice of the common kind is laregley employed in preparing the beverage known as lemonade...Lemons vary very much in size, and the ordinary boxes contain from two hundred and forty to four hundred and twenty lemons each; the brands L and LL being used to designate sizes, single L;'s being the largest. They are wrapped separately in order to prevent decay by crushing together. Thin-skinned lemons are the juiciest. There are over thirty varieties of lemons in cultivation, but they are generally classified according to the place of growth or shipping. The principal importations into this country are from Sicily (Messina lemons) and from Valencia. The lemon can be successfully grown in Florida and California--products which are receiving great attention. The oil of lemon is largley used in cooking and confectionery; the extract of lemon, sold for domestic use, being simply a dilute solution of the oil in alcohol. The pure juice of the lemon is extremely efficacious in attacks of acute rheumatism."
---The Grocer's Companion and Merchant's Hand-Book [New England Grocer Office:Boston] 1883 (p. 74-5)

These notes illustrate the growing popularity of lemons, as imported fruit, in the 19th century.
"Volume of Average Annual Inports and Exports at Cincinnati by Canal, River, and Railway for Five-Year Intervals, 1846-1860 (years Ended August 31). Seleccted Textiles and Groceries:

Lemons: Unit=box
Imports (in thousands)
1846-1850=3.1
1851-1855=5.9
1856-1860=9.9
SOURCE: Western Prices Before 1861, Thomas Senior Berry [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 1943 (p. 320)

How much did they cost?

[1888]
The cargo of 2,400 boxes of oranges and 5,500 boxes of lemons that the steamer Iniziativa brought from Messina was sold yesterday by Brown & Seccomb of 25 State -street. Prices ofl emons had been steadily advancing for over a week, until an advance of $1 per box was reached, and a story was started that ta storm in the Mediterranean had shaken down a very large number of lemons form the trees at Messina, and that consequently there was a scarcity of that fruit, as the shaken lemons had rotted on the ground. Mr. Brown, however, denied that there had been any storm about Messina, and said that the advance in price was owing to the light receipts and the warm weather. There were plenty of lemons in Messina, and as soon as prices advanced here the shippers there would sent on all that were needed. After the first sale yesterday prices declined 50 cents per box."
---"Lemons Going Down," New York Times, June 15, 1888 (p. 8)

[1895]
"There has been a considerable advance in the price of lemons, owing partly to the increased demand for them, caused by the hot weather and partly to a shortager in the Sicilian crop. A box of lemons which would sell in ordinary seasons for $2.50, is now worth between $5 and $6. The dealers in this crop feel sure that nothing but prolonged cool weather can diminish the present price of the fruit."
---"Lemons Advance in Price," New York Times, June 21, 1895 (p. 2)

Lemon prices from 1910-2004 are reported in the Historical Statistics of the United States/Cambridge University Press (Volume 4)

ABOUT LEMON MERINGUE PIE IN AMERICA

"Lemon-meringue pie, made with lemon curd and topped with meringue, has been a favorite American dessert since the nineteenth century."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 182)

Elizabeth Coane Goodfellow (1767-1851) is credited for introducing lemon meringue pie to America in her Philadelphia shops [The Larder Invaded: Reflections on Three Centuries of Philadelphia Food and Drink, Mary Anne Hines, Gordon Marshall & William Woys Weaver, Historical Society of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 1987 (p. 66)

Where is lemon meringue pie considered a *traditional* dessert? Many places are known for this particular pie. Many of them are in the South. Lemons are a favorite component of southern cooking. Think lemon chess pie and lemonade.

"Lemon meringue pie has been around a long time in the South and most likely grew out of the vast repertoire of puddings, whose popularity pies eclipsed in the late nineteenth century. It is remarkably similar ot the Queen of Puddings."
---Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, Bill Neal [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1996 (p. 275)

"A pie can always be turned out for dessert as long as there are lemons in the house, and American cooks have devised many recipes. President Calvin Coolidge is said to have favored a simple lemon custard pie. The even more common lemon meringue, ever present in public eating places, is one more dish served at Boston's Parker House that has become a classic in the American repertoire. And a special version gained fame swiftly when it went on the menu of the Lion House Social Center in Salt Lake. The following version is based on a method worked out in the 1960s by the late Michael Field in collaboration with Dr. Paul Buck, a food scientist at Cornell University. The determined Mr. Field devoted days to making lemon meringue pie after another until he eliminated the "weeping" common to meringues that sit around on counter; his trick was to use a little calcium phosphate powder, a food-grade phosphate product available in drugstores and suggested by Dr. Buck."
---American Food: The Gastronomic Story, Evan Jones [Vintage Books:New York] 1981, 2nd edition (p. 465-6) [includes recipe]

Many 17th and 18th century cookbooks contain recipes for lemon custard, pudding (sometimes served in a puff-paste base), pies, and tarts. These are often topped with pulverized sugar. It is not until the middle of the 19th century we find recipes that would produce lemon meringue pie, though they are not titled as such:

[1769] "A Lemon Pudding
Blanch and beat eight ounces of Jordan almonds with orange flower water. Add to them half a pound of cold butter, the yolks of ten eggs, the juice of a large lemon, half the rind grated fine, work them in a marble mortar or wooden basin till they look white and light. Lay a good puff paste pretty thin in the bottom of a china dish and pour in your pudding. It will take half an hour baking."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 82)

[1847] "Meringue Pie
This may be made by adding to a nicely made and baked tart, a nice whip, made as follows: to the white of a fresh egg, add two tablespoons of finely pulverized white sugar; flavor with lemon, vanilla, or any other flavor, which may be liked, whip the same as for kisses, then with a knife lay it on the top of the tart, and whape it nicely off at the edges, then set it into an oven and close it for a few minutes until it is delicately browned."
---Mrs. Crowen's American Lady's Cook Book, Mrs. T. J. Crowen [Dick & Fitzgerald:New York] 1847 (p. 256)
[NOTE: A recipe for lemon pie immediately precedes this recipe. It has both top and bottom crust.]

[1871] "Lemon Custard Pie No. 2
Grate one-half outside of a lemon and squeeze out the juice, yolks of two eggs, two tablespoonsful heaped of sugar, half a cup of water, one teaspoonful of butter; stir well, and bake in a deep dish lined with crust; beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth; stir in two tablespoonsful of pulverized sugar and spread over the top of the pie as soon as it is baked set in the oven till the top is nicely browned."
---Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book, Mrs. M. E. Porter [1871] (p. 296)

[1879] "Lemon Pie.
Yolks of four eggs, white of one, beaten very light; grated rind and juice of one large lemon; five heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar. Bake in an undercrust till the pastry is done. Froth the whites of three eggs with five tablespoonfuls sugar. Spread over the pies and bake again till brown.--Mrs. Col. S."
---Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Marion Cabell Tyree [1879] (p. 406)

[1882] "Lemon Pie (no. 3)
3 eggs
1 great spoonful butter
3/4 cup white sugar
Juice and grated peel of lemon
Bake in open shells of paste.
Cream the sugar and butter, stir in the beaten yolks and the lemon, and bake. Beat the whites to a stiff meringue with three tablespoonfuls powdered sugar and a little rose-water. When the pies are done, take from the oven just long enough to spread the meringue over the top, and set back for three minutes. This mixture is enough for two small, or one good-sized pie. Eat cold."
---Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery, Marion Harland [1882] (p. 350)

[1885]
"Lemon pie.
Grate the rind and express the juice of three lemons; rub together a cup and a half of powdered sugar and three tablespoonfuls of butter; beat up the yolks of four eggs, and add to the butter and sugar, lastly the lemon; bake on a rich puff paste without an upper crust. While the pie is baking beat up the whites of the four eggs with powdered loaf sugar, spread it over the top of the pie when done; then set back in the oven a few moments to brown slightly."
---La Cuisine Creole, second edition [F.F. Hansell & Bro:New Orleans] 1885 (p. 191)

ABOUT MERINGUE

Food historians tell us the precursor for meringue was a dish called "Snow" (aka snow eggs). This frothy dessert was popular in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Recipes can be found in cookbooks through the 19th century. The method is quite like that employed to make meringue.

Compare this 17th century French recipe with classic meringue recipes.

"Snow eggs.
Boile some milk with a little flower water well allyed, then put it in more than half of one dosen of whites of eggs, and stir well all together, and sugar it. When you are ready to serve, set them on the fire again and glase them, that is, take the rest of your whites of eggs, beat them with a feather, and mix all well together; or else fry well the rest of your whites, and powre them over your other eggs. Pass over it lightly an oven lid, or the fire-shovell red hot, and serve them sured with sweet waters. You may instead of whites, put in it the yolks of your eggs proportionable, and the whites fried upon. The cream after the Mazarine way is make in the same manner, except you must put no whites of eggs on it."
---The French Cook, Francois Pierre, La Varenne, translated into English in 1653 by I.D.G., with an introdution by Philip and Mary Hyman [Southover Press:East Sussex] 2001 (p. 98-99)

Who "discovered" meringue?

"Meringue...an airy, crisp confection of beaten egg white and sugar. The word probably entered French from German, as did many other French words ending in -ingue. It first appeared in print in Massailot [1691], although earlier recipes for the same thing but without the name had been published. The name travelled to England almost at once and first appeared in print there in 1706....It seems to have been only in the 16th century that European cooks discovered that beating egg whites, e.g. with a whisk of birch twigs (in the absense of any better implement), produced an attractive foam. At first the technique was used to make a simple, uncooked dish called snow, made from egg white and cream. However, cooking such a foam would not have resulted in meringue, for any fat in the mixture, as represented by the cream, prevents the egg whites from taking on the proper texture...When true meringue made its appearance in the 17th century, it still lacked its name and was often called "sugar puff.""
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 197)

"Meringue. The name for this confection of sugar and beaten egg white is a direct borrowing from French "meringue." but beyond that its origins are obscure. Legend has it variously that it was named after the town of Meringen in central Switzerland of after the Saxon town of Mehringyghen, seat of the operations of the Swiss pastrycook Gasparini who supposedly invented it there in 1720. However, the fact that the word had even entered the English language before this (it is first mentioned in Edward Phillip's dictionary The New World of English Words, in John Kersey's 1706 edition) casts considerable doubt on the story. In fact, mixtures of beaten egg white and sugar cooked in a slow oven had been popular since the early seventeenth century (they were called "Italian biscuit"), and it was the great increase in the proportion of egg white which marked the inception of the superlight meringue towards the end of the century."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 211)
[The 2008 online Oxford English Dictionary confirms the earliest Englis print reference for meringue dates to 1706:
1. a. A light mixture of stiffly beaten egg whites and sugar, baked until crisp; a shell or other item of confectionery made of this mixture, typically decorated or filled with whipped cream. In some recipes, esp. when meringue is used as a topping, cooking of the mixture is stopped before it is completely crisp: cf. SNOW n.1 5a. 1706 Phillips's New World of Words (ed. 6), Meringues (Fr. in Cookery), a sort of Confection made of the Whites of Eggs whipt; fine Sugar, and grated Lemmon-peel, of the bigness of a Wal-nut; being proper for the garnishing of several Dishes.

"Whites of eggs produced the Elizabethan dishful of snow, a spectacular centrepiece for the banquet course following a festal meal...The beating of egg whites was not altogether easy before the fork came into common use late in the seventeenth century...A 1655 recipe for cream with snow suggested a cleft stick, or a bundle of reeds tied together and roll between your hands standing upright in your cream....at the turn of the [17th] century a still lighter creation was introduced from France, in which the proportion of frothed egg white to sugar was greatly increased. The new arrival was quickly added to the sweetmeats of Britain, among which it is still to be found. Its French name remains unaltered. It was the meringue."
---Food and Drink in Great Britain from the Stone Age to the Nineteenth Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 148)

The 1938 edition of Larousse Gastronomique tell us that meringue was invented in 1720 by a Swiss pastry chef named Gasparani. Queen Marie Antoinette is said to have enjoyed these. Recent editions of this book do not reference the 1720 date and they attribute the invention of meringue to Gasparini, a Swiss pastrycook who practiced his art in a small the small German town of Meiringen. Recent editions also add that until the early 19th century, meringues cooked in the oven were shaped with a spoon; it was Careme who first had the idea of using a piping bag. Meringue recipes here.

RECIPES FOR MERINGUE through time:

[1604]
"To Make White Bisket Bread
Take a pound & a half of sugar, & an handfull of fine white flower, the whites of twelve eggs, beaten verie finelie, and a little annisseed brused, temper all this together, till it bee no thicker than pap, make coffins with paper, and put it into the oven, after the manchet is drawn."
---Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, original recipes published in London, 1604; edited and modern notes added by Hilary Spurling [Elisabeth Sifton Books:London[] 1986 (p. 118)
[NOTE: The editor of this book states this recipe produced meringues. Our survey of historic meringue recipes indicates flour was never a traditional ingredient. Book includes modernized recipe/instructions.]

[1828]
"Dry Meringues.
It is to be observed, that meringues, to be well made, require the eggs to be fresh, and that you are not to break them till the very moment you are going to use them. Have some pounded sugar that is quite dry, break the white of the eggs into a clean and very deep pan, break them without loss of time, tell they are very firm, then take as many spoonsful of sugar as you have whites, and beat them lightly with the eggs till the whole is well mixed. Observe, that you are to be very expedtious in making the meringues, to prevent the sugar from melting in the eggs. Have some boards thick enough to prevent the bottom of the meringues from getting baked in the oven. Cut slips of paper two inches broad, on which place the meringues with a spoon; give them the shape of an egg cut in half, and let them all be of an equal size: sift some sugar over them, and blow off the sugar that may have fallen on the paper; next lay your slips of paper on a board, and bake them in an oven moderately hot. As soon as they begin to colour remove them from the oven: take each slip of paper by the two ends, and turn it gently on a table; take off a little of the middle with a small spoon. Spread some clean paper on the board, turn the meringues upside down on that paper, and put them into the oven, that the crumb or soft part may be baked and acquire substance. When you have done this, keep them in a dry place till wanted. Then you send them up to table, fill them with creme a la Chantilli, or with something acid. Remember, however, that you are not to use articles that are very sweet, the meringues being sweet in themselves. Mind that the spoon is to be filled with sugar to the brim, for the sweeter the meringues are, the better and crisper they are; but if, on the contrary, you do not sugar enough, the meringues are tough. The pink is sometimes made by adding a little carmine diluted in some of the apareil, but the white ones are preferable; if a clean sheet of paper is put into a small stock-pot, and the meringues also put therein, and well covered, they will keep for one or two months as good and crisp as the first day: on which account, if you have a vacancy for one dish, which is wanted in haste, it will be found very advantageous to have them made beforehand."
---The French Cook, Louis Eustache Ude, photoreprint of 1828 edition published by Carey, Lean and Carey:Philadelphia [Arco Publishing Company:New York] 1978 (p. 408)

"Meringues au Marasquin au Sucre Chaud
For a pound of sugar take the whites of ten eggs, and clarify the sugar as directed in its proper place. Reduce it almost au casse, then let it cool, while you beat your eggs well; next put them with the sugar. When the sugar begins to get cool, mix the eggs well with it with a wooden spoon; then mix two spoonsful of marasquin with the whole; dress the meringues on some paper as above, and glaze with sugar sifted over them, before you put them into the oven, which, by the by, is not to be so hot as for other meringues. As soon as the top gets a substance, take them from the paper, stick two together, and put them into the hot closet to dry. Leave the most part in the middle. These meringues belong more particularly to confectionary, as they are sweeter than any other."
---ibid (p. 408-9)

[1869]
"Meringues.
Put 10 whites of egg in a whipping bowl, and whip them very firm; add 1 lb. of pounded sugar; mix; and, with a spoon, set the mixture at intervals on sheets of paper, in portions of the shape and size of an egg; dredge some pounded sugar over the meringues, and, after a minute, shape off the superfluous sugar; Cook the meringues in the oven of some baking boards; and, when they assume a pale yellow tinge, take them off the paper; Remove some of the inside with a spoon,--being careful not to spoil the shape of the meringues; dredge a little sugar over, and put them on a baking-sheet, in a slack oven, to dry; Reduce 1/2 pint of very stron coffee with 3/4 lb. of sugar, to obtain a syrup registering 38 degrees F. On the syrup gauge; when cold, mix this syrup to some well-shipped double cream; Fill the meringues with the cream, reversing one, meringue over the other, and pile them up on a napkin on a dish."
---Royal Cookery Book, Jules Gouffe, translated by Alphonse Goufee [Sampson Low, Son, & Marston:London] 1869 (p. 517)

"Meringue with Coffee Cream
Whip 6 whites of egg, and, when very firm, mix in 1/2 lb. of pounded sugar; Cut 5 rounds of paper, 6 1/2 inches diameter; Put the meringue in a paper funnel, and press it out on each round of paper into rings 5 1/2 inches in diameter; sprinkle some sifted sugar over the rings, and put them on baking boards in the oven; When they are of a nice yellow colour, turn the rings over on to a baking-sheet, and dry them in a slack oven; Make some Geonoise Paste, as directed for Timbale de Genoise with Orange Jelly (vide page 527); When the paste is done and cold, cut out a round, 5 1/2 inches diameter, and put the 5 rings of meringue on it, one above the other; Reduce 1 gill of strong coffee and 1/4 lb. of sugar to a syrup registering 36 degrees F.; when cold, add it to one quart of well-whipped double cream; Fill the centre of the meringue with this cream, piling it up 2 inches above the meringue; and serve."
---ibid (p. 529)
[NOTE: This books also contains recipes for meringues filled with creams...chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla creams.]

[1907]
"4347: Ordinary Meringue
Whisk 8 egg whites until they become as stiff as possible. Rain in 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fine caster sugar mixing lightly with a spoon so that the egg whites do not lose their lightness. Note: The proportion of whites used in the making of meringues is variable and it is posible to use as many as 12 egg whites for 500 g...of sugar. It should be noted, however, that the lighter the meringue the lower the cooking temperature should be; they should be dried rather than cooked."
---The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery, A. Escoffier, translated by H.L. Cracknell and R.J. Kaufman [John Wiley:New York] 1979 (p. 518)

"4348: Italian Meringue
Place 500 g. Fine caster sugar and 8 egg whites into a copper bowl and mix together. Place over a gentle heat so as to warm the mixture slightly and whisk until it is thick enough to hold its shape between the wires of the whisk. If not for immediate use, place the meringue in a small basin and keep in a cool place covered with a round of paper."
---ibid (p. 518)

"4349: Italian Meringue made with cooked sugar
Whisk 8 egg whites until very stiff whilst 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) sugar is cooking to the hard ball stage. Pour the sugar on to the whites in a continuous thin stream whisking vigorously intil it has all been absorbed."
---ibid (p. 518)

[1929]
"Meringues or Kisses
Whites 4 eggs, 1 cup fine granulated sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Beat whites until stiff and add, a spoonful at a time, two thirds cup sugar, beating vigorously between each addition, and continue to beat until mixture will hold its chape. Carefully cut and fold in vanilla an remaining sugar. Drop from tip of spoon, or force thorugh pastry bag and tube on tin sheet or wet board covered with a sheet of paper. Bake thirty minutes in a very slow oven, not allowing them to change color until the last few minutes, when they should become a very delicate brown. Remove from oven, invert paper and kisses, and wet paper with a damp cloth, wehn kisses many be easily removed."
------The Candy Cook Book, Alice Bradley [Little,Boewn & Company:Boston] 1929 (p. 175-6)
[NOTE: This book also contains recipes for French Meringues (2 cups sugar, whites 5 eggs, 2/3 cup water, 1 teaspoon vanilla), Mushroom Meringues (meringue mixture shaped like mushroom caps & stems, topped with grated chocolate or cocoa), Turkey Meringues (ice-cream filled meringues shaped like turkeys served on spun green sugar), Nut Meringues (any kind of chopped nutmeats) and Cocoanut Meringues (whites of 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 cup fine granulated sugar, few grains of salt, 1/2 cup cocoanut shredded).

[1941]
"Iced Meringue
10 egg whites, 1 lb granulated or powdered sugar.
Whip the egg white almost stiff and then gradually add the sugar and continue whipping until very stiff. Put the mixture in a big pastry bag with a large plain tube and form into round or oblong shapes on white paper placed on a baking sheet. Bake in a very slow oven of about 250 degrees F. until very lightly browned. Remove from the paper and press the bottom lightly with the thumb to make a slight impression. To serve, put two of these meringues together with ice cream of any desired flavor. Decorate with whipped cream."
---Cooking a la Ritz, Louis Diat [J.B. Lippincott Company:New York] 1941 (p. 399)

About: baklava, napoleons & sopaipillas.

"Elephant's ear is the literal meaning of goash-e-feel, an name given because to the size and shape of these crisp, bubbly, sweet pastries. They ar ussualy served with tea; and often a bride's family sends the to the bride and groom the day after the wedding. They are also made for Nauroz (New Year's day, 21 March, the first day of spring)...There are many variations of goash-e-feel, so do not feel limited as to the size and shapes you can make. Some Afghans make what is called goash-e-asp (horse's ear), or bow knots. Sizes vary considerably."
---Noshe Djan: Afghan Food & Cookery, Helen Saberi [Prospect Books:London] 1986 (p. 136-7)
[NOTE: This book contains a recipe for goash-e-feel. If you would like it let us know.]

PALMIERS
Our food reference books state palmiers (also known as palm leaves) were invented around the turn of the 20th century. The name suggests they were first made in France, but we find no evidence confirming this. In fact, we find a recipe for palm leaves (Palmenblatter) in Viennese Cooking, O. And A. Hess [Crown:New York] 1960 (p. 213), which suggests this pastry might have commanded a broader swath of geography. We also find no attribute to the first person/restaurant credited for cooking/serving this cookie. In the world of food history, this is not uncommon.

"Palmier. A small pastry made of a sugared and double-rolled sheet of puff pastry cut into slices, the distinctive shape of which resembles the foliage of a palm tree. First made at the beginning of the 20th century, palmiers are served with tea or as an accompaniment to ices and desserts."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter] 2001 p. 832)

"Palmiers are small sweet biscuits made from puff pastry and shaped somewhat like butterflies. To their anonymous early twentieth-century inventor their shape evidently suggested more the topknot of leaves on a palm, for French palmier means literally 'palm tree'."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 237)

"Palmier. Also called palm leaves, palmiers are small pastries made from sugar-encrusted puff pastry. The sides of a rectangle of puff pastry are folded into the center, then folded over to make four layers, and cut across the width into thin strips. These are laid on their sides on a baking sheet and they fan out as they bake to resemble the leaves of palm trees. Palmiers are baked until they are crisp and the sugar caramelizes to a rich golden brown. They are served with tea or coffee or as an accompaniment to ice cream and other desserts. France."
---The International Dictionary of Desserts, Pastries and Confections, Carole Bloom [Hearst Books:New York ] 1995 (p. 210)

"Sometimes, you just have to hand it to French culinary genius. Take the palmier (palm-YAY). It's a cookie, nothing more than flour, water, salt, a light sprinkling of sugar and immoderate amounts of butter. Yet as the palmiers bake, the moisture in the butter-riddled layers evaporates, causing the dough to puff into hundreds of paper-thin flakes. Meanwhile, the sugar caramelizes ever so slightly, casting a glassy sheen. The result? A pastry whose crisp, caramelized exterior gives way at the slightest pressure to countless crisp layers. Ironically, such a delicacy originated as a means for resourceful pastry chefs to salvage leftover puff pastry dough. (When you consider the labor-intensive nature of puff pastry, you understand why one would want to use every last piece.) Though simple, the technique used to make palmiers can be fraught with peril. When rolled too tightly, sliced a smidgen too thick or underbaked by even a minute, the interior remains soggy and leaden. When rolled too loosely or baked at excessive temperatures, the pastry becomes brittle and shatters upon touch. And when caked with sugar, the delicate balance is lost and the pastry becomes one-dimensional. Athough ubiquitous throughout France, the proper palmier is hard to find here. At some American bakeries the Frisbee-size confection is as sweet as saccharin and dubbed the "Elephant Ear." At Latin American markets, they may be labeled orejas ("ears" in Spanish) though the only ones I have come across are packaged in plastic, which suffocates the crisp pastry. And at a German bakery, I once requested a palmier and received nothing more than a polite, though perplexed, stare. It seems I should have requested the rather inelegantly named "Pig's Ear." Some franchise French bakeries, such as La Madeleine, have "palmiers" that are far inferior to the "elephant ears" offered by Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market. Though mass production is no friend to the palmier because the slicing and sprinkling go largely unpoliced, a notable exception is the downtown Washington location of Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market, whose elephant ears put most palmiers to shame. (Though all of the stores use the same frozen puff pastry dough shipped from a French bakery in Manhattan, the P Street store's bakery consistently turns out a crisp, buttery, flaky palmier, albeit the size of a dinner plate.) Buonaparte Breads at Historic Savage Mill in Savage and in Baltimore produces a fine palmier, but they no longer ship them to their retail customers in the District since they are too fragile. Whether sent out with after-dinner espresso at Michel Richard's Citronelle in Georgetown or nibbled as an elegant something to satisfy a sweet tooth on a leisurely afternoon, the palmier can be an amazing thing. When you can find them. They are usually priced by the pound and vary greatly in size. SEN5ES For the palmier lover, the pastry case at Georgetown's sedate Sen5es Bakery and Restaurant is a sight to behold. Row after flawless row of compact, perfectly wound palmiers are nestled against one another. While they last. "Believe me," says pastry chef, Bruno Feldeisen. "If I don't have them, I hear about it!" Feldeisen says he doesn't make a profit on the palmiers. But it's one of the little things that chefs do for their clientele. Most days, that is. "It needs to be made with love, and sometimes we don't have the love," explains Feldeisen...PATISSERIE POUPON Ruth Poupon's rendition of a palmier defines daintiness. Slightly larger than a silver dollar (or rather, a French franc) and so thin as to be almost diaphanous, it seems as though it might shatter if breathed upon. But it is surprising sturdy. (Those at the bottom of the bag do tend to break though.) The appropriately faint sweetness is underscored by a crisp, barely colored pastry that, lacking much caramelization, in truth seems almost more butter cookie than palmier...AMERNICK At first glance, Amernick bakery in Cleveland Park may seem an unlikely source for a palmier. Yet Ann Amernick, who has held pastry chef positions with Michel Richard and White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier, chose to include, amid her eclectic assortment of pastries, a rendition laced not with sugar but a sharp, salty blend of Parmigiano-Reggiano and aged Dutch Gouda cheeses. Amernick's savory rendition is best appreciated when taken home and warmed in the oven. Why a savory palmier? It's a carry-over from the days when Amernick's bakery was in Wheaton, on the site of a former Dutch bakery. The palmiers were a favorite of customers, says Amernick. "And I liked them." An equally laudatory stick version is also available..."
--- "A Palmier by Any Other Name . . .," Renee Schettler, The Washington Post, November 7, 2001 (p. F7)

The earliest recipe we find for palm leaves (aka palmiers) in an American cookbook is from Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book [1896]

Related foods? Syrup pie (shoofly is one example) & Sugar pie (aka chess pie)

ABOUT PECANS
Pecans are a "new world" food. They are indigenous to North America and were known to Native Americans long before the Europeans settled there. Traditionally, these nuts are connected with the American south where they have been incorporated into many sweet treats, especially pie and candy.

"Pecan. The most important nut of N. America, is bourne by one of the hickory trees, Carya illinoiensis. The hickories, which are related to walnut trees, include several species of edible nuts...but the pecan is much the best. Its native habitat is the central southern region of the USA. The name comes from the Algonquin Indian paccan, which denoted hickories, including pecans...Most pecans now some from cultivated trees, although many old, wild trees continue to produce nuts which are gathered and marketed. ..The main uses of pecans are in sweet dishes and confectionery, although they are also used in a stuffing for turkey. Pecan pie is one of the most famous American desserts. Pecan butter is also made."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 592)

"Pecan. A North American nut (actually a kind of hickory nut) sometimes said to be a native of Oklahoma, the pecan...is really indigenous to an area extending from the U.S. Midwest throughout the South and Southwest into Mexico--a region where it still grows wild today. Pecans are commerically cultivated in the band of states running from Georgia west to New Mexico, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, and outside of the Western Hemisphere, in Israel, South America, and Australia. The first recorded instance of pecan cultivation is said to have been when Thomas Jefferson carried the trees from the Mississippi and gave them to George Washington. But long before this--eons before the Europeans arrived--pecans were an important item in the diet of Native Americans living in the south-central region of North America."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1831)

"Pecan. The nut of the tall hickory tree native to America, ranging from Illinois down to Mexico...The name comes from various Indian words (Algonquian paccan, Cree pakan, and others) and was first mentioned in print in 1773. Thomas Jefferson introduced the tree to the eastern shores of Virginia, and he gave some to George Washington fo planting at Mount Vernon. A Louisiana slave named Antoine was the first successfuly to graft and cultivated pecan trees in 1846."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 236)

About pecans

Related food? pralines.

• Pizza Margherita
• American pizza
• New York style
• Chicago style
• French style: pissaladiere
• Pizza delivery & takeout
• Frozen pizza in America

"...there is no earlier evidence than third century Macedonia for the use of a flat loaf of bread as a plate for meat, a function which bread continued to perform in the pide of Turkey, the pita of Greece and Bulgaria, the pizza of southern Italy and the trencher of medieval Europe. Although meat and other relishes were seen earlier in Greece as accompaniments to cereal, the cereal had taken other forms."
---Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 1996 (p. 157)

"It has been argued that the Italians did not "invent" pizza. Perhaps this is technically true, but there can be no denying that Italy was most certainly the seedbed out of which the concept would flourish to the fullest. In one form or another, pizza has been a basic part of the Italian diet since the Stone Age, and Italians have devised more ways of interpreting the dish than anyone else...Italian pizza evolved from the basic concepts initiated by two different cultures: the Etrucans in the north and the Greeks in the south...The earliest pizza prototypes originated when Neolithic tribes first gathered wild grains, made them into a crude batter, and cooked them on the hot stones of their campfires...Italians may have made pizza famous, but they certainly did not invent the concept of the dish...the Greeks, who occupied the southernmost regions of Italy for over 600 years (from about 730B.C. to 130 B.C.), were the greatest bakers of ancient times...Flat, round breads were baked with an assortment of "relishes" (in ancient Greek, a relish meant anything spread or baked on bread), such as oils, onions, garlic, herbs, olives, vegetables, and cheese, on tip. A rim of crust was left around the bread to serve as a kind of handle..."
---The Pizza Book: Everything There is to Know About the World's Greatest Pie, Evelyn Slomon [Times Books:New York] 1984 (p. 3)
NOTE this book has much more information on the the history of pizza...ask your librarian to help you find a copy or obtain reprints of pages 3-13.

"The term pizza is clouded in some ambiguity, though it may derive from an Old Italian word meaning a point, which in turn led to the Italian word pizzicare, to pinch or pluck. The word shows up for the first time in print as a Neapolitan dialect word--piza or picea--about 1000 A.D., possibly referring to the manner in which something is plucked from a hot oven...While many Mediterranean cultures and regions of Italy have long had their versions of flatbreads...the baked flatbread most people now think of as pizza originated in Naples, and was a favorite snack of occupying Spanish soldiers at the Taverna Cerriglio in the 17th century. The soft, baked crispy dough that the Neapolitans called sfiziosa would be folded over into a libretto (little book) and consumed in the hand. It was baked by men called pizzaioli, who worked in small shops called laboratori. By the middle of the 19th century the word pizza had become common parlance for the food item..."
---Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink, John Mariani [Broadway Books:New York] 1998 (p. 196-199)
NOTE this book also has much more information on the the history of pizza.

"A pizza consists mainly of a flat disc of bread. This is normally the base for various toppings, and it is safe to assume that since early classical times people in the general region of the Mediterranean were at least sometimes putting a topping on their flat breads [ie foccacia]...the word pizza itself was used as early as the year 997 AD in Gaeta, a port between Naples and Rome...Abruzzi had something called pizza in the twelfth century. Calabria made pitta or petta, Apulia pizzella or pizzetta, Sicily sfincione. Tuscany's schiacciata...was first roasted on stones by the ancestral Etruscans...The napoletana, i.e. pizza of Naples, can indeed be seen, and has been so far seen for over a century, as the archtype of modern pizzas..."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 611)

Pizza alla Margherita?

"...on June 11, 1889, an official of the Royal Palace asked a local pazaiolo named Raffaele Esposito to create a special pizza for the visit of King Umberto I's consort, Queen Margherita, to Capodimonte. Esposito created three examples, but the one most favored by the Queen was made with ingredients in the three colors (tricolore) of the Italian flag--red (tomato), white (mozzarella) and green (basil) atop the pizza dough. Esposito quickly named the newly fashionable pizza after the queen, and thus was born the pizza alla Margherita and that was to become the classic Neapolitan pizza, recognized as such by the Associazone Vera Pizza Napoletana (The True Neapolitan Pizza Association)..."
---The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink, John Mariani [Broadway Books:New York] 1998 (p. 197) Why do we call it "pizza?"

"The origins of its name are not altogether clear. Its extreme similarity to the Provencal pissaladiere, a dough base covered generally with onions, olives, and anchovies, would make it tempting to assume that Italian somehow acquired the word from French, were it not for the fact that Italian pizza actually denotes a far wider range of items than what English-speakers would recognize as pizza. Essentially it means 'pie', and this can cover for example a cloased fruit pie as well as the open pizza. The usual course suggested for it is Vulgar Latin *picea, a dervative of Latin pix, 'pitch' (in which case it would be an amost directly parallel formation with English pikelet), but it could also be related to Greek pitta."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 259)

Pizza in America: New York traditions & Chicago-style

Pizza was imported to the United States by Italian immigrants. For many years, pizza was mostly available in cities with large Neapolitan populations [New York, Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Baltimore etc.]. It wasn't until American soldiers returned from WWII that pizza became a national phenomenon.

"Pizza came to America at the end of the nineteenth century with immigrants from southern Italy. Italian immigrants built commercial bakeries and backyard ovens to produce bread they had eaten in Italy. In addition, Italian bakers used their ovens for flatbreads: northern Italians baked focaccia, while southern Italians made pizza. Initially, pizza was made by Italians for Italians, but thy the late 1930s after the Great Depression many Americans were eating pizza in Italian restaurants and pizzerias on the East and West Coasts...Over time, two basic and distinct styles of American pizza appeared. A thin-crust pizza, commonly called "East Coast" or "New York" style, is made with just a few toppings like pizza made in Naples...The crust of thick- or double-crust pizza, also called "West Coast" style, serves as a foundation for a larger number of toppings...There are several uniquely American pizzas. Deep dish, or "Chicago style," pizza originated at Pizzeria Uno...in 1943...California or "gourmet" pizza originated in 1980 at Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkeley, California."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 286)

"One of the first pizza sold in the United States was baked some fifty years ago by a 13-year-old pizzaiuolo named Gennaro Lombardi at 53 1/2 Spring Street in Little Italy section of New York...Pizza may never replace hot dogs as the great American "bite," but their amazing acceptance in recent years prompts a question: Why pizza and not, say, Mexican enchiladas? The guess is that a growing number of Americans of Italian origin aided by advertising and refrigeration, have made pizza as delectable as such other postwar imports as Lollobrigida. The entertainment weekly Variety, going gastronomic the other Wednesday, reported that the "extent to which the pizza pies are replacing hot dogs at drive-ins was demonstrated at the concession trade show at Allied States Ass'n convention which featured more pizza-making machines than frankfurter heaters." At the Texas State Fair, largest exhibition of its kind, pizza evoked great interest on the midway. More inquiries were made about pizza than any other food with the exception of the "corny dog," the dressed-up hot dog on a stick... ...A Neapolitan pizzaiuolo might be startled by pizza in the United States...At a "pizza bar" in a large Manhattan department store--where thousands are absorbed weekly by hungry shoppers--three kinds are for sale: plain pizza (a pie); pizzaret (a muffin), and a best-seller called the pizza-bagel, created, after some protest, by a turncoat pizzaiuolo from Florida...There are fresh pizza, warm-over pizza, refrigerated pizza, warm-over pizza and frozen pizza, selling everywhere from sidearm joints to pizza palaces. (Though "pizza" means pie or pies, some Americans insist on saying "pizza pies.")...Gennaro Lombardi seemed to be the man to turn to. Nobody has disputed his claim to having the oldest pizzeria in the United States....Gennaro said, "They all came here to eat my pizza, all the opera stars, Scotti, Tetrazzini, Caruso..."
---"Pizza a la Mode," Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times, February 12, 1956 (p. SM 133)

How much did the first pizzas cost?
Early pizza prices are extremely difficult to research. These eateries did not (have to) advertise to draw business. Nor were they *worthy* of recognition by mainstream newspapers or menu collectors. Our research indicates the first pizzas may have cost 5 cents:

"Nov. 10, 2005, marks our 100th anniversary. I'm selling everything for 5 cents," says Brescio [manager of Lombardi's]. "That's what it cost back in 1905. Now that's history."
---"Ten History Courses: There are some interesting stories behind NYC restaurant names--just ask Jimmy," Sunny Lee, Daily News [New York], February 16, 2003, p. 17
[NOTE: there is no reference to product size sold in 1905 vs. today. Hamburgers and hot dogs were also sold for a nickel at this time.]

"The first American cookbook recipe for pizza appeared in Specialita Culinarie Italiane, 137 Tested Recipes of Famous Italian Foods, a fund-raising cookbook published in Boston in 1936. That recipe, for Neapolitan pie or Pizza alla Napolitana, directed that pizza dough be hand-stretched until it was one-quarter-inch-thick. The dough was topped with salt and pepper, Scamozza (Scamorza) cheese, tomatoes, grated parmesan cheese, and olive oil in that order. There were no ingredients for the pizza dough itself; instead, the reader was told that the dough "can be purchased in any Italian bake shop.""
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 286)

"While not yet a bona fide fast food, pizza was soon giving the fast foods run for the consumer's money. By the mid-1950s, thanks to the popularity of spaghetti and tomato sauce, a taste for a white farinaceous base slathered in thick and salty tomato sauce had become an integral part of the American palate. The country was therefore well primed for the invation of pizza....In the 1950s...pizza suddenly burst onto center stage. In part this was because it fit so well in the culture of the times. It was regarded as an ideal family food, equally acceptable to all ages and both sexes. Its taste hardly departed from the tried and true, yet its form could be readily accomodated to the era's newer, more casual way of eating: children's parties and snacking in front of the television set. The informal, communal way it was eaten in restaurants made it particualrly popular with teenagers, and by the mid-1950s boisterous "pizza parlors" dotted the main streets of Italian neighborhoods, their oversized booths for six or eight crammed with voracious young eaters, while others lounged by the entrance waiting for take-home orders...Pizza also became the hottest restaurant item of the 1950s because, unlike most pastas, it was not particularly affected by delays between cooking and eating. This made it ideal for the two main growth sectors in the television-battered restaurant industry, drive-ins and take home places. By 1956 it had shunted aside hot dogs as the most popular item in both. By the late 1960s, American were consuming two billion pizzas annually." ---Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Harvey Levenstein [University of Californa Press:Berkeley] 2003 (p. 229-30)

More on American pizza:

• "As American as Pizza Pie," Smithsonian Magazine, June 1997
  
• Regional variations, Pizza Marketing Quarterly
• American pizza industry statistics & consumer profiles (current)
• Pizza: A Global Hisory/Carol Heltosky (book)

New York style pizza
According to the food historians the introduction of pizza to New York City is attributed to Gennaro Lombardi when he opened up his pizzeria at 53 1/2 Spring Street in 1905.

"Legend has it that Neapolitan pizzailo Raffaele Esposito of the Pizzeria de Pietro was the first to make a pie with tomato, basil, and mozzarella pizza (the colors of the Italian flag) to honor the visit of Queen Margherita, consort of King Umberto I, to Naples in 1889. This thereafter was called pizza alla margherita and became very popular in that city.

But the pizza remained a local delicacy until the concept crossed the Atlantic in the memories of immigrants from Naples who settled in the cities along the Eastern Seaboard, especially in New York City. The ingredients these immigrants found in their new country differed from those in the old: In New York there was no buffalo-milk mozzarella, so cows's milk mozzarella was used; oregeno, a staple southern Italian herb, was replaced in America by sweet marjoram; and American tomatoes, flour, even water, were different. Here pizza evolved into a large, sheet-like pie, perhaps eighteen inches or more in diameter, reflecting the abundance of the new country....The first record of a pizzeria in New York was Gennaro Lombardi's, opened in 1905 on Spring Street, but others quickly followed in the Italian communities around the city. Still, pizza and pizzerias and, later, pizza parlors' were little known outside the large cities of the East until after World War II, when returning American GI's brought back a taste for the pizzas they had had in Naples along with the assumptions that pizza, like spaghetti and meatballs, was a typical Italian dish, instead of a regional one."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 244)

"The city's selection of restaurants was enriched by the arrival of immigrants during the late nineteenth century. The food served in the first Italian restaurants in the city was adapted from recipes of Naples and Sicily, the home of many Italian immigrants. Pizza was a Neapolitan food uncommon in most of Italy but popular in New York City after G. Lombardi opened a pizzeria on Spring Street in 1905."
---The Encyclopedia of New York City, Kenneth T. Jackson editor [Yale University Press:New Haven] 1995 (p. 1000)

"New York pizza did not exist before 1905, when Gennaro Lombardi, a Neapolitan immigrant, began to sell pies in his grocery store in Little Italy. Lombardi's was by most accounts the first New York pizzeria, and Mr. Lombardi, who hired and trained a series of other immigrants, became the sturdy tap root of a tree of family and acquaintances that would go on to define great New York pizza."
---New York Pizza, the Real Thing, Makes a Comeback, The New York Times, June 10, 1998, Section F; Page 1; Column 2 (this article includes a list of notable historic pizzarias including Totonno's in Coney Island and Grimaldi's in Brooklyn.

Other articles of interest (your librarian can help you get copies):

"The Top Pizzas In New York: Bred and Baked By Tradition ," The New York Times, June 16, 1995, Section C; Page 1; Column 1
"Pizza a la Mode," The New York Times, Feb. 12 1956 VI 64:3 (profile of Gennaro Lombardi)
"The pizza with an attitude," Travel Holiday, Jun97, Vol. 180 Issue 5, p44, 4p, 7c
"Bravo! Original New York pizzeria still serves up the best," Sacramento Bee, January 7, 2001, pg. E1

If you need extensive historic research materials on NY pizza (or other NY foods) contact these organizations:

The New York Public Library

extensive culinary history collection, esp. NYC restaurants & menus. Fee-based research service available.

The New York Historical Society

Contact the library for item availability.

Museum of the City of New York

New York Food Museum

online exhibit managed by volunteers--they accept e-mail requests

Chicago-style (deep dish) pizza
Food historians generally credit Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo for the "invention" of Chicago's deep-dish style pizza. The year? 1943. The restaurant? Pizzeria Uno. Uno's "legend" here

Of course, few foods are truly invented. Pizza was certainly known to Chicago for several decades before the Sewell's opened shop. Most are creative iterations of existing dishes. There is some speculation, based on the fact that Chicago-style pizza is thickly-topped and sometimes served in square pans, that the recipe was influenced by Sicilian cuisine. Did you know recipes for tomato pie, both open tarts and double-crust (what we now call "stuffed pizza"), were also known to American cooks in the early 19th century?

"The pizza...first made its appearance in Chicago around 1912. It was introduced by a man who went around with a pizza filled basket on his head...At that time there was some doubt whether these pizzas were to be used as shingles or munched."
---"Cold War Looms: Pizza Pie Vs. Hot Dog," Thomas Morrow, Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1954 (p. 18)

The Windy City's first pizzeria opened at 907 Taylor St. in 1924:
"The only place in Chicago where you can buy Italian pizza is at a little restaurant on Taylor street near Halsted. There you can wath Tom Granato, for sixteen years the proprietor of Chicago's only pizzeria, concoct the delicacy and carefully deposit it in his big brick oven slipping it off long handled shovels of well sandpapered wood onto the hot bricks. The foundation of pizza is a dough similar to that in English muffins. To rolls out a piece the size of a pie crust on his marble slab, cuts up fresh Italian cheese over it, covers it with tomato--the little Italian pear tomato--sprinkles olive oil over it, and deposits it in the brick oven for a few minutes. It is served in a tin pie plate, cut into four sections, and eaten with the fingers. Try it with a salad. Young Blackie, waiter at Tom's Pizzeria Napolitana, who tells you how Tom and his wife, Molly, took him off the street ten years ago, made known the other specialties of the place--stuffed macaroni, eggplant parmigiano, and cannoli, an Italian dessert, with sweet, cold Italian cottage cheese served in a fold of ice cream cone like pastry."
---"Front Views and Profiles," June Provines, Chicago Daily Tribune, October 17, 1939 (p. 17)

The second pizzeria opened (according the general concensus of local food experts), opened on the southwest corner of Onio Street and Wabash Avenue in 1943:
""When Riccardo opened the Uno, there was only one other place to buy pizza in Chicago and that was on Taylor street," [Ike] Sewell said."
---"Story of 2 Pizzerias and 1.5 Million Pizzas," Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1964 (p. C6)

"In 1943 Ike Sewell, a liquor-company executive and former All-American guard from Wills Point, Tex., and Ric Riccardo Sr., an artist, seaman, apache dancer, and tavernkeeper born in Biella, Italy, decided to team up and open a Mexican restaurant in Chicago. A site was leased, and Riccardo began painting bullfights and cockfights on the walls. Sewell was a lover of and an expert on Mexican cuisine. Riccardo knew nothing about it, and there was no decent place in Chicago (according to Sewell) to taste it. One of Riccardo's bartenders, a chap named Raoul, offered to cook up a fine Mexican meal. Riccardo ate what Raoul had wrought and got violently ill. He painted out the cockfights and bullfights and left to vacation in Italy. Riccardo returned having stumbled upon a better idea--pizza. Sewell was the one in the dark this time. He had never tasted tht stuff, never even heard of it, but agreed with Riccardo that it should serve as a meal not just an appetizer as it was in Italy. They came up with a balance of cheese and sausage and spices and decreed that it should be used in abundance. They experimented with pans of various sizes and shapes and came up with the "pizza-in-a-pan" (some call it "deep dish") method of cooking that yielded a crust neither Neopolitan nor Sicilian but something else, something brand new. And no one cared. "At first," Sewell said, "we had to cut it into little slivers and give it away to people who were drinking at the bar." Now, 33 years later, Uno, together with its nearby sister, Pizzeria Due, seres 2,500 pizzas on a big day...What Sewell and Ruccardon began has been imitated, perhaps improved upon...and occasionally ripped off."
---"Ike and Ric: They were the first with the thickest," Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1976 (p. G16)

"Mrs. Sewell, 95, whose husband, Ike, gained fame as the co-inventor of deep dish pizza, died early Sunday morning at her Chicago home. Ike Sewell, along with partner Ric Riccardo Sr., is credited with inventing deep dish pizza in 1943, but Mrs. Sewell also helped concoct the pizza that put Chicago on the map, according to Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz, a family friend. "If Ike was the godfather of deep dish pizza, she was the godmother," Wirtz said. Mrs. Sewell married Ike, a liquor company executive, in 1939, and in the 1940s and '50s helped him with recipes and decor for his Pizzeria Uno, Pizzeria Due and Su Casa restaurants."
---"Florence Sewell, 95, Chicago philanthropist," Art Golab, Chicago Sun-Times, April 10, 2000 (p. 56)

"What is this pizza called Chicago deep-dish, and what makes it so different from other pizzas? In the truest sense, deep-dish pizza (pizza-in-the-pan is the alternate nom de pizza) is a first-generation descendant of what Italian-Americans commonly referred to as "tomato pie." A sideline of Italian bakeries at the turn of the century, a tomato pie was baked in a large rectangular pan with 1-inch-high sides. It had a crust two fingers thick and a generous layer of seasoned tomato puree that was dusted with grated Romano cheese just before it went into the oven...Chicago-style deep-dish pizza came into being in 1943 when two savvy entrepreneurs, Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo, opened Pizzeria Uno on the corner of Wabash and Ohio. It was a time when a restaurant serving only pizza was unheard of. The story goes that it took six months of experimentation to produce that "cheese, tomato, and meat pie" called deep-dish pizza. It was so thick that it required the use of a knife and fork -- which brought down another wall of pizza tradition: Pizza had always been something that you ate with your hands. Utensils to eat pizza? Incredible."
--- Pizza Today, June 2005 [NOTE: page no longer connects, 10 April 2009]

French pizza? Oui!
Many people assume pizza originated in Italy. Certainly there is ample evidence. On the other hand? Food does not respected man-made political boundaries. Countries sharing common borders often share similar dishes, ingredients, and flavors. Pizza-type foods are popular throughout the Mediterranean region. Yes, there is French pizza. It flourishes in the balmy southeast region of the country. The ingredients are quite similar to those of neighboring Italy. Why? These foods were common to the area.

"Pissaladiere. A specialty of the Nice region, consisting of a flan filled with onions and garnished with anchovy fillets and black olives. It is traditionally coated with a condiment pissalat before being cooked, hence the name. A good pissaladiere should have a layer of onions half as thick as the base if bread dough is used; if flan is made with shortcrust pastry (basic pie dough), the layer of onions should be as thick as the flan pastry. It can be eaten hot or cold...Pissalat. Also known as pissala. A condiment originating from the Nice Region, made of anchovy puree flavored with cloves, thyme, bay leaf and pepper and mixed with olive oil. Originally pissalat was made from the fry of sardines and anchovies, but because this is not readily available outside the Mediterranean area, anchovies in brine may be used instead."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 899)

"A pissaladiere is in effect a Provencal version of the pizza. It consists of a base of bread dough (or sometimesf fried slices of bread) with a savoury topping. Nowadays this is usually onions stewed in olive oil, or a mixture of tomatoes and anchovies, or a puree of anchovies and garlic...all threee decorated with black olives, but originally it would have been a mixture of tiny fish, typically fry of sardines, anchovies, etc., preserved in brine. This was known as pissala (presumably a derivative of Latin piscis, fish'), and gaveits name to the pissaladiere. (Despite the striking similarity, there does not appear to be any direct etymologial link wiht Itlaian pizza.)"
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 258)

"Though the French influence is everywhere in this country, a few foods that are common in France have managed to escape our dragnet. The French pizza is one example. Yes, pizza. Although it is most often known as a pissaladiere, it is what it is: a round, flat bread, crisp on the bottom, simply garnished on top, rustic and yet urbane. Travel through the regions of France with your eyes open for anything that looks like pizza, and you'll come back impressed not only by how plentiful these pizzas are but also by their variety. Some, like the galette de Perouges, are sweet rather than savory. And many of them are served at room temperature. In fact, the pizzas of France and Italy, despite having different tendencies in herbs and cheese, have more in common with each other than they do with most of those produced here...The Provencal version of the pissaladiere is often garnished with two of the region's signature ingredients: black olives and sliced tomatoes, both in minuscule amounts by our standard. It is usually served at room temperature as often as not because in Provence, and throughout France, pizza is snack bread. Because it lacks gobs of cheese congealing on top, it retains its appeal even when cool. It is so simple--mostly just sweet onions on a wonderful crust. And yet it was so much more.If pissaladiere is the most familiar of the French pizzas, galette de Perouges is the most surprising. This is the best-known product of Perouges, a well-preserved and perfectly restored medieval village not far from Lyons. Although galette is a word used for many free-form tarts in France, this particular galette seems more familiar than most: a large, round pie, slid into an oven on a paddle and cut into crisp wedges. On closer inspection, however, and especially on tasting, this is no common variation on pizza. The crust is rich and sweet--a yeasted dough made with butter and sugar, and rolled nearly flat. And the topping is butter and sugar; no more. The galette is baked in a hot oven until the sugar caramelizes and the crust becomes brittle; unlike most pizzas, this dough is not chewy but crunchy. The tarte flambee of Alsace may be the world's northernmost indigenous and legitimate pizza. You see it everywhere, although it is most common in the north, around Strasbourg. Alsace is French, of course, but the food, language and appearance are quite German in character. In this regional crossroads, there are many variations, based largely on the background of the baker. Tarte flambee is a bit puffier and less flat than most pizza. Although it is usually spread with fromage blanc, bacon and onion before baking, there are many variations. There is a peculiar convention in tarte flambee: Each wedge is rolled from the wide crust end to its point, and the rolls are eaten end to end. Because French pizzas are so difficult to find outside France--and are among the easiest of all pizzas to make--it makes sense to try them at home."
---"VIVE LA PIZZA AN ITALIAN CLASSIC GETS A FRENCH MAKEOVER," Mark Bittman, New York Times, Sept. 23, 1998 (p. F1)

First pizza delivery?
Legend likes to claim the first pizza delivery took place in Italy, 1889:

"The first pizza delivery was in 1889, by Raffaele Esposito owner of the famous pizzeria Pietro il Pizzaiolo in Naples. The recipients were visiting King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. Refusing to go to the likes of a pizzeria, the queen ordered in."
---"PIZZA: SOME TOPPING FACTS, "Press Association November 11, 2002

Our survey of articles published in the New York Times (ProQuest database) uncovered an advertisement for this franchise opportunity "Fresh Pizza Trucks, "The Pizzeria on Wheels" (NYT, June 5, 1960, p. F26). Another article from 1971, describing the meeting of the North American Pizza Association, clearly indicates home pizza delivery was a long established and popular activity. Then, as today, the industry was plagued with bad drivers having accidents while on company time:

"During a discussion on pizza delivery, one man asked his fellow pizzamakers what he could do about his high accident rate. He said that his delivery men had wrecked six cars in the last six years and that his insurance had been cancelled. "How about a rubber car?" one man jokingly suggested from the rear."
---"When Else Would Call Hamburgers the Enemy?," Judy Klemesruds, New York Times, March 31, 1971 (p. 38)

FROZEN PIZZA
The earliest print reference we find to manufactured frozen pizza (in the USA) is patent 2,688,117, "Method for Making Frozen Pizza," filed by Jo Bucci, Philadelphia PA, August 10, 1950. We also find evidence of refrigerated pizza products penetrating grocery stores. It was just a matter of time before frozen pizzas were competing with TV Dinners for space on the consumer's ubiquitous living room feeding tray.

[1950]
"...Leo Giuffre has introduced his ready-to-cook pizzas in... the last two weeks. Already the cheese and tomato-topped "pies," which made their debut in Bean Town three months ago, are available for 49 cents each in a few stores here, including Kaboolian's Market, 389 Avenue of the Americas, and Philip's Quality Market, 80-28 Thirty-seventh Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens. The pizzas, which are kept under refrigeration but not frozen, are ready to pop into the oven...One pizza (about nine inches in diameter) yields two generous servings, ot three for not quite such ambitious appetites...Though Mr. Giuffre's Roma Pizza Company, Inc. has been operating in Long Island City for only a little more than ten days, it is already turning out 3,000 of the delectable pastries daily."
---"News of Food: Pizzas Now Offered Here Ready-to-Cook," New York Times, June 28, 1950 (p. 34)

[1951]
"With almost every jobbing musician in the local working at another trade or business druing the day, it remained for Emil De Salvi, band man about town, to finally shelve his music vocation when his odd-hour avocation paid off highter than the union scale. De Salvi has perfected a frozen pizza pie, six fanciful fillings, for the television viewing home trade."
---Tower Ticker," Savage, Chicago Daily Tribune, February 7, 1953 (p. 23)

[1951]
"Giuseppi's Frozen Pizza Pie, Philadelphia."
---"Advertising News & Notes," New York Times, December 7, 1951 (p. 50)

[1951]
"Del Buono Frozen Pizza, Camden NJ."
---"Advertising News," New York Times, December 19, 1951 (p. 56)

[1953]
"Pizza, not undergoing a curious gustatory vogue, is a hot freezing item in New York and Chicago with at least a half dozen local concerns in action. E. De Salvi, president of Pizza-Pro Corp. of Chicago, who claims to do 95% of the frozen pizza business in the Windy City, is now trying to line up distributors in St. Louis, Nashville, Rockford, Indianapolis and surrounding points. But the competition is tough. In St. Louis, Mr. De Salvi found a local tavern owner who was freezing the Italian specialty during slack times at the bar."
---"Frozen Foods: Nation Eats Mountain Tonnage of Them as Competition Cuts Prices," Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1953 (p. 1)

[1954]
"Another of the week's 652 patents was granted to Joseph Bucci of Philadelphia for a method of making in frozen form that popular delicacy, pizza, sometimes called tomato pie. He says the method applies also to other edibles that combine layers of dough with liquid or moist filing, such as upside-down cakes, puddings and dumplings. After he shapes the pizza shell out of dough, Mr. Bucci spreads on a "sealing agent" such as tomato puree, and bakes it. The sauce is cooked separately, cooled and placed on the shell. Optional items such as cheese trips are added and the whole is then frozen. The patent number is 2,688,117."
---"Walking Truck-Boat Just Puts one Pontoon Before the Other: Frozen Pizza...," Stacy V. Jones, New York Times, Feburary 6, 1954 (p. 23)
[NOTE: Mr. Bucci's patent can be viewed online.]

[1954]
"Feast on frozen foods from famous houses...Like "Little Bo-Pizzas," delightful miniature hors d'oeuvres pizzas from the Petite Food Corporation."
---"Live to Eat in Macy's Food Festival," New York Times, April 22, 1954 (p. 7)

[1954]
"Petite Foods Corporation, Brooklyn...its line of frozen food specialties, one of which rejoices in an unlikely name, of Little Bo-Pizzas, a miniature frozen pizza product."
---"New Business," New York Times, October 7, 1954 (p. 35)

[1954]
"Frozen pizza is available in many groceries, ready to eat after heating in the kitchen oven."
---"Pizza Pies Hit Big Time in America," James D. Schacter, Washington Post, March 9, 1954 (p. 25)

"A war cloud, no bigger than a press agent's mind, is hanging over Chicago, if you are going to believe Folger S. Decker, a man of his word--thousands of them, in fact. This is to be a gustatory grapple, Mr. Decker said, with the pizza pie on the one side, and the hot dog, weiner or tepid puppy, on the other. He said is would be cold war, of course, as many of these pizza pies are frozen. ..."Do you realize," continued Mr. Decker, "that the pizza has made terrific infroads on the hot dog market? During the last two years alone, Mr. Emil De Salvi, who purveys frozen pizzas, has blanketed the country with 5 million pizza pies.""
---"Cold War Looms: Pizza Pie Vs. Hot Dog," Thomas Morrow, Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1954 (p. 18)

[1955]
"It's new--A new frozen food product, Little Bo-Pizzas are the first miniature pizzas to make their apperance. Tasty rounds of a special dough blended with imported type aged cheese, spices, olives and tomatoes, Little Bo-Pizzas are ideal for a party canape tray. Also nice served with salads or cold cuts for luncheon; and ideal for bridge or canasta nibblers. Just pop them in the oven until crisply touched with brown--about 8 minutes, serve."
---"It's New," Washington Post and Times Herald, February 18, 1955 (p. 67)

[1957]
"Frozen pizza crust ready for you to top with anything that pelases the whimsey or taste of your family, is the newest twist in the pizza craze. Holton's Pizza Crusts are partly cooked, ready to brown and serve. The bottom of each crust is pierced with holes to allow the heat to penetrate and crisp the batter. You can top it with anything from sausage to ice cream. It is frozen, but if it is partly thawed when it reaches your kitcen it can be refrozen safely, acording to the manufacturer. Each package contains three individual portions."
---"'Round the Food Stores: for a look at the latest ideas," Lois Baker, Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1957 (p. B17)

[1966]
"For a teenage get-together or a family supper, you can't go wrong when you serve Miniature Pizzas. With one recipe you get 30 pizzas--to bake and serve or store in the freezer for a spur-of-the-moment gathering. They're easy to make with refrigerated biscuits, a seasoned tomato sauce and grated cheese. Topped with anything you choose to mix, match or even scramble, theyse make-ahead finger foods are fun. Heap them on a serving tray, hot from the oven, and watch them disappear."
---"They're Frozen Assets," Washington Post, July 21, 1966 (p. D3)

[1967]
"One of the best sellers it the Grotto is a $.75 snack--the famous Pizza Tichinese, somewhat similar to the pizzas of southern Italy. You can make an excellent facsimile back home using a frozen pizza for a base. "Pizza Ticininese, U.S.A. For each person provide 1 individual-size frozen pizza..."
---"The Fast Gourmet," Poppy Cannon, Chicago Daily Defender, June 1, 1967 (p. 24)

[1972]
"If your taste runs to pizza, we have some good news and some bad news. As snack foods go, frozen pizza is remarkabley nutritious. But judges by CU's test of 41 products, it isn't apt to be very good. We were disappointed by the crusts, taste or high bacteria counts on all bur four brands, and we could rate those bands only Fair. Our tests centered on the four most popular pizza styles. We evaluate 17 brands of cheese pizza, 14 of sausage, seven of pepperoni and three topped with hamburger. By way of comaprison, we also bought and tested at least one sample of fresh pizza in each of those four styles. On average, our frozen pizzas contained a bit more dough than a fresh pizza of the same type, and a bit less cheese. The ran neck and neck in the amount of sauce. our taste-tests indicated though, that liberality or stinginess with any given ingredient wasn't a reliable guide to eating quality...Chemical analysis indicated that the samples averaged roughly half water, about 30 per cent carbohydrate, 10 per cent protein and, depending on pizza variety, anywhere from 6 1/2 to nine per cent fat. A typical, four-ounce serving would provide 220 to 304 calories. So, despite their status as a snack food, the pizzas we checked fulfill many of the nutritional requirements of a main dish...pizza's balanced protein-calorie relationship, uncommon in a snack food, might well promote the use of pizza as a meat substitute in your meal now and then...Pizza's main pitch for the buyer's dollar is based on sensory appeal. Accordingly, CU's food technologists evaluated from three to six samples of each frozen pizza fro flavor, aroma, texture and appearance...Unfortunately, very few crusts filled the bill even well enought to be rated Fair...No CU food project would be complete without a close look at product cleanliness. We accordingly analyzed duplicate samples of every product for viable microbes. Our first effort was a total bactyeria count per gram of pizza. That's usually a pretty good indicator of a food's sanitary status...our findings were far from reassuring...To be fair, such a dismal bateriological showing doesn't necessarily mean that a food is leaving the factory in filthy condition. Those bacteria can thrive at freezing temperatures will get a chance to increase inordinately in a pizza that's mishandled or stays overlong in a retail showcase...A check of the pizzas for extraneous matter also yielded disquieting results--about 96 per cent of the samples tested contained some quantity of insects or insect fragments. Those unsavory intruders turned up in every brand, and represent a higher level of such contamination than we have found in any other food category...As far as taste goes, we think most would do well to buy a freshly cooked pizza at a pizza parlor they know to be good and freeze it themselves..."
---"Frozen Pizza," Consumer Reports, June 1972 (p. 364-367)

[1976]
"Coming to Chicago [and other markets] shortly as a part of a national roll-out is Stouffer's French Bread Pizza, a frozen prdouct in test in four markets including Indianapolis, through a good part of 1975."
---"Souffer's Heats Up Frozen Foods Mart," Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1976 (p. C10)
[NOTE: Records of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office indicate this product was introduced to the American public October 4, 1973. Registration #73414283]

Dishing out the history of pork pies is quite the challenge for any food historian. The practice of encasing sweet or savory minced contents in pastry (aka "pie" dates to Medieval times. Early recipes varied according to culture, cuisine, and liturgical season (Lent, Christmas). They often combined meat with fruit (apples, raisins) and spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, etc.) Pork, being a versatile and common meat, was often employed as pie filling. From this tradition sprang two primary recipe lines: savory raised pies and sweet compact mincemeat dishes. Melton Mowbray Pork Pies are protected by EU law. Some modern pork pies don't contain any pork at all!

"The British pork pie...are survivals of the medieval tradition of raised pies, and have changed surprisingly little. This particular pie, simply known as 'pork pie', is of a form distinct from other pies which merely happen to be made with pork. The filling is of fresh pork without other major ingredients, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a small quantity of herbs, especially sage. At Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, long famous for its pork pies, anchovy essence was added not only for its flavour but because it was thought to give the meat an attractive pink colour, while pies from other districts were brownish or greyish."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2nd edition, 2006 (p. 625)

Sweet vs savoury?

"By the middle of the seventeenth century, pies had become a peculiarly Engish specialty; even the French were prepared to concede superiority. By the time [Eliza] Smith was writing, they had a long an honourable past, and were thus less susceptible to foreign influences than the made dishes at which the French were held to excel. If it is true that there was a parallel trend in both countries towards separating savory from sweet, it is not surprising that the English pies shoudl have followed the general movement, but it is noticeable that they did so very much more slowly than made dishes. English books of the eighteenth century contain many receipts for meat pies with sweet and sour elements...What is perhaps the best-known English mixture of meat and sugar, the mince-pie, retained this combination until well into the nineteenth century, and survives, without the lean meat but with beef suet, to our own day. But even in the area of pies, the distinction between sweet and savory was beginning to operage and was visible in English texts before 1700. A sweet element, either sugar or dried fruit, was almost always present in Markham's receipts...The distinction betweeen savour and sweet pies did not become really obvious in the cookery books until around 1720. The cooks closest to French culinary practice removed the sugar entirely...E. Smith gave pies with chicken and with lamb in both savour and sweet versions, but allowed the confustion of flavours to persist in her vegetable and mince pies--in other words, those where the sweet-savoury association lingered the longest." ---The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Gilly Lehmann [Prospect Books:Devon] 2003 (p. 194-5)

Selected 19th century British recipes

[1861]
"PORK PIES (Warwickshire Recipe).
835. INGREDIENTS.—For the crust, 5 lbs. of lard to 14 lbs. of flour, milk, and water. For filling the pies, to every 3 lbs. of meat allow 1 oz. of salt, 2–1/4 oz. of pepper, a small quantity of cayenne, 1 pint of water. Mode.—Rub into the flour a portion of the lard; the remainder put with sufficient milk and water to mix the crust, and boil this gently for 1/4 hour. Pour it boiling on the flour, and knead and beat it till perfectly smooth. Now raise the crust in either a round or oval form, cut up the pork into pieces the size of a nut, season it in the above proportion, and press it compactly into the pie, in alternate layers of fat and lean, and pour in a small quantity of water; lay on the lid, cut the edges smoothly round, and pinch them together. Bake in a brick oven, which should be slow, as the meat is very solid. Very frequently, the inexperienced cook finds much difficulty in raising the crust. She should bear in mind that it must not be allowed to get cold, or it will fall immediately: to prevent this, the operation should be performed as near the fire as possible. As considerable dexterity and expertness are necessary to raise the crust with the hand only, a glass bottle or small jar may be placed in the middle of the paste, and the crust moulded on this; but be particular that it is kept warm the whole time. Sufficient.—The proportions for 1 pie are 1 lb. of flour and 3 lbs. of meat. Seasonable from September to March..."

LITTLE RAISED PORK PIES.
836. INGREDIENTS.—2 lbs. of flour, 1/2 lb. of butter, 1/2 lb. of mutton suet, salt and white pepper to taste, 4 lbs. of the neck of pork, 1 dessertspoonful of powdered sage. Mode.—Well dry the flour, mince the suet, and put these with the butter into a saucepan, to be made hot, and add a little salt. When melted, mix it up into a stiff paste, and put it before the fire with a cloth over it until ready to make up; chop the pork into small pieces, season it with white pepper, salt, and powdered sage; divide the paste into rather small pieces, raise it in a round or oval form, fill with the meat, and bake in a brick oven. These pies will require a fiercer oven than those in the preceding recipe, as they are made so much smaller, and consequently do not require so soaking a heat. Time.—If made small, about 1–1/2 hour.
Seasonable from September to March."
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton

[1875]
"Pork Pies.--Pork pies are generally made of the trimming taken from a hog when it is cut up. Make and shape the pies according to the directions given in the following recipe, and remember that the pies must be moulded while the paste is warm, and that they are much more easily made with a mould than without one. As a mould is not always at hand, those who are note particularly expriernced in the work (and it requires skill) may mould the pie round a jelly-pot or bottle, which has beeen made warm by beining immersed for some time in warm water. Cut the meat into pieces the size of a small nut, and keep the meat and fat separate. Season the whole with pepper and salt, half a dozen young sage-leaves finely shred; or a tea-spoonful of dried and powdered sage, one ounce of salt, two and a quarter ounces of pepper, and a pinch of cayenne, may be allowed for a pie containing three pounds of meat. Pack the fat and lean closely into the pie in alternate layers until it is filled. Put on the cover, press and pinch the edges, and ornament according to taste. Brush over with well-beaten egg, and bake in a slow oven, as the meat is solid and requires to be soaked thorugh. Neither water nor bone should be put into pork pies, and the outside pieces will be hard unless they are cut small and pressed closely together. The bones and trimmings of the pork may be stewed to make gravy, which should be boiled until it will jelly when cold, and when this has been nicely flavoured, a little may be poured into the pie after it is baked through an opening made in the top. When pies are made small they require a quicker oven than large ones. Time to bake, about two hours for a pie containing three pounds. Probable cost, 3s."
---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations [Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.:London] 1875 (p. 610)

"Pork Pies, Pastry for.--Put a quarter of a pound of finely-shred beef suet--or five ounces of lard, or a quarter of a pound of mutton suet--and an ounce of fresh butter into a saucepan with half a pint of boiling water and a pinch of salt. Stir the mixture until the fat is dissolved, and pour it boiling hot into a pound and a half of flour. Knead well to a stiff paste, and add a little more warm water if required. Shape the dough, and get it into the oven while it is warm. If the pie is to be baked in a mould, lay a piece of the proper shape in the bottom. Press long pieces into the sides, and fasten thesee to the top and the bottom with white of egg. If a mould is not to be used, cut off as much apstry as will make the cover, and wrap it in a cloth to keep warm. Mould the rest with both hands into the shape of a cone, and make the sides smooth and firm. Press the top down with the knuckles of the right hand, and with the left press the outside closely to keep it firm and smooth. Be careful that the walls are equlally thick in every part. Fill the pie, put on the cover, pinch the edges, fasten securely with white of egg, ornament the outside in any wan thay may suit the fancy, brush over with yolk of egg, and bake in a slow oven if the pie be large, in a quicker one if it be small."
---ibid (p. 610-1)

[1894]
"Pork Pie, Raised.--Those who kill pigs of their own have no trouble in obtaining suitable pie meat; those who buy it should be careful to get the best quality, and to see that it is free from the slightest taint, every slice being carefully looked over. Required: for a medium-sized pie, a pound and a half of pork, the same weight of paste, about a teaspoonful and a half of salt, or, for some, two teaspoonfuls will be none too much, nearly as much pepper, and herbs if approved, and a little gravy. Cost, about 7d. per pound. The meat should be fairly fat, and is best from a bacon pig, but the loin or neck of pork may be used; the foreloin is preferred by many. Cut into dice (by means of a mincer, or by hand), the pieces bieng even in size, the fat and lean mixed will, and the seasoning thoroughly blended with the meat; the meat should be sprinkled with a spoonful of water or stock during the mixing, as it tends to bind it. Full directions for the raising of the paste will be found on page 785, and either of the reicpes on page 748 may be followed in making it; the medium paste is suitable. Those who possess moulds sometimes prefer a pork pie raisied by hand, and baked out of a mould, as the consider the flaour is better. The meat should be packed in firmly, and the lid put on after the inner edges have been egged over; the edges should be crimped with the paste nippers (opage 741), and leaves put round the side and on the lid; make a hole or two, and put a centre ornament of paste or not, as preferred. Then egg the pie over, and put in a good oven. (See the directions for RAISED PIES, page 785). This will take about two to two and a half hours; the latter will not be too long in most cases, and a skewer should be passed into the middle of the meat to test it. The gravy should be made from the bones and any skinny and gristly parts of the meat, seasoned as required, and strenghthened with gelatine or meat of a gelatinous sort; the liquor form boiled pork should be used in place of water at the start, should any be handy; supposing, for instance, the feet and ears of a pig to have been boiled, there is in the liquor a good foundation for the gravy of the pie. NOTE.--Should herbs be used, any of those named under PORK SAUSAGES in a previous chapter will answer; but sage is generally liked. If fresh, about half a teaspoonful would be enough to flavour the above for most people. Doupble the quantity of dried sage could be suet. We may mention that at a certain farmhouse in the Midlands, the pork pies are always made with layers of stoned raisins betweent the layers of pork. We never met with these pies elsewhere, but can recommend them."
---Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894 (p. 782-3)
[NOTE: the Raised Pie recipe referred to above (p. 785+) is too long to transcribe. We can mail/fax/scan if you like.]

Cheshire Pork Pie
Cheshire Pork Pie descends from the long and venerable line of English meat pies. Food historians traces these dishes to the Middle Ages, if not before. Ingredients, cooking methods and size vary according to place and period. The pairing of pork and apples is ancient. Mincemeat pies are closely related.

"Cheshire Pork and Apple Pie. Since I wrote about this pie some years ago, readers have occasionally queried its status as a raised pe. Unless the pastry walls are thick, the juice burst out and spoil its appearance...So I returned to Hannah Glasse. Her instructions are vague, but it is placed among the dish pies (raised pies start six recipe later). Later in the book she gives instructions for a Cheshire pork pie to be made at sea, with salt pork, and potatoes instead of apples; and this pie is clearly a double crust pie made in a dish. The question remains, should the pie be eaten hot or cold? By its position, I would say hot, like the chicken pie before it, and the Devonshire squab pie that follows. But it tastes so good cold. By leaving the pie for 24 hours, you wil find that the flavours blend together in the most delicious way.

Shortcrust pastry
1 kilo (2 lb) boned loin of pork
4 rashers (2 lb) streaky green bacon, chopped
250 g (8 oz) chopped onion
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
275 g (12 oz) Cox's orange pippins, or similar dessert apple
Brown sugar
Butter
150 ml (1/4 pt) white wine, dry cider or light ale
Beaten egg or top of milk, to glaze
Line a 1 1/4 litre (about 2 pt) capacity pie dish with pastry. Slice and cube the pork, them put in a layer. Mix bacon, onion and seasonings and scatter some over the pork. The peel, core and slice the apples and arrange them on the meat; scatter with a little brown sugar; the amount depends on the sweetness of the apples, but it should not be overdone. Repeat the layers until the ingredients are used up. Dot the top with butter--about 60g (2 oz)--and pour on the alcohol. Cover with pastry in the usual way, and brush with beaten egg or top of the milk. Bake at mark 7, 220 degrees c (425 degrees D), for 20-30 minutes, then lower the heat to mark 3, 160 degrees C (325 degrees F), and leave for a further 45 minutes, or untl the pork feels tender when tested with a larding needle or skewer through the central hole in the pastry lid." ---English Food, Jane Grigson [Penguin Books:London] 1994 (p. 231-2)

Compare these 18th & 19th century recipes:

[1747]
"A Cheshire Pork-Pye.
Take a Loin of Pork, skin it, cut it into Stakes, season it with Salt, Nutmeg, and Pepper; make a good Crust, lay a Layer of Pork, and then a large Layer of Pippins pared and cored, a little Sugar, enough to sweeten the Pye, then another Layer of Pork; Put in half a Pint of White Wine, lay some Butter on the Top, and close your Pye: If your Pye be large, it will take a Pint of White Wine."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse, facsimile 1747 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 1995 (p. 72)

"Cheshire Pork Pye fo Sea
Take some salt Pork that has been boiled, cut it into thin Slices, and equal Quantity of Potatoes, pared and sliced thin, make a good Crust, cover the Dish, lay a Layer of Meat, seasoned with a little Pepper, and a Layer of Potatoes; then a Layer of Meat, and a Layer of Potatoes, and so on till your Pye is full. Season it with Pepper; when it is full, lay some Butter on the Top, and fill your Dish above half full of soft Water. Close you Pye up, and bake it in a gentle Oven."
---ibid (p. 125)

[1817]
"Cheshire Pork Pie.
Take the skin of a loin of pork, and cut it into steaks. Season them with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and make a good crust. Put into your dish a layer of pork, then a layer of pippins, pared and cored, and sugar sufficient to sweeten it. Then place another layer of pork, and put in a half a pint of white wine. Lay some butter on the top, close your pie, and send it to the oven. If your pie is large, you must put in a pint of white wine."
---The Female Instructor: Young Woman's Guide to Domestic Happiness [Thomas Kelly:London] 1817 (p. 452)

Cape Breton Pork Pie
Food historians tell us traditional European pork pies date to medieval times. Modern Cape Breton pork pies, however, are different. Why? Pork is not an ingredient. Recipes suggest this item evolved from the mincemeat/mince pies tradition.

Why are they called pork pies when they have no pork?
Excellent question. Up until the 20th century, lard and suet were common ingredients in pies and pie crusts. In the Old World beef suet was the norm. In the New World hogs were plentiful. It is quite likely the original Cape Breton pork pies employed lard from these animals. Now butter and other shortenings are used, thus rendering the moniker "pork pies" a delicious relic of times past. We contacted several organizations in Cape Breton regarding this question. Many were able to furnish current recipes but none could provide documented history.

Canadian English, a real mouthful

[1977]
"Cape Breton Pork Pies
How these little tarts got their name remains a mystery to us. It could be that pork fat was once used as the shortening, or it might be a reflection of the wonderful Cape Breton sense of humor.
Tart Shells
1 cup butter
4 tablespoons icing sugar
2 cups flour
Cut the butter into the flour; add the sugar and knead until well blended. Press small amounts of cough into small muffin tins. Bake in a 425 degrees F. Oven for 10 minutes. When cool fill with the following:
Filling
2 cups chopped dates
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup water
Lemon juice
Simmer the above ingredients until the dates are of a soft consistency. Cool; then fill the tart shells. Ice with butter icing."
---Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens, Marie Nightingale [McCurdy Printing Company:Nova Scotia] tenth printing May 1977 (p. 164)

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Portable pies: turnovers, calzones, empanadas, pasties & pierogi

The practice of making small, stuffed breads and pastries dates back to ancient times. The beauty of these self-contained foods was they were easy to cook, inexpensive, portable and could be consumed anywhere with little mess. Many cultures developed similar foodstuffs though the pastry/bread & fillings differed with region, religion and seasonal availability. In ancient Iraq there was sanbusak. In Italy there were calzones, in England there were Cornish Pasties and so on.

"There is reason to believe that [sanbusak] is the progenitor of the empanada and calzone. Sanbusak, an Arabic word that comes from the Persian sanbusa, meaning anythign triangular, was first described as a stuffed pastry in the early ninth century by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim (d. 851), a well known author from Iraq...In a thirteenth-century Arabic cookery book of al Baghdadi, sanjusaj is described as a stuffed triangular pastry froed in sesame oil...By the thirteenth century, sanbusak appears in Spain, almost as the same recipe, a triangular fried pastry."
---A Mediterranean Feast, Cliffod A. Wright [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 573)

Craig Claiborne sums this topic nicely:

"Turnovers, which are festive and are almost infinate in their variety, also pinpoint to a degree the migrant influences in America. Just consider their backgrounds: There are Cornish pasties, which indicate the early presence of Welsh miners in Michigan, the Mexican-influenced empanadas and empanaditas of the West and Southwest, and the curiously named hot-ta-meat pies of Louisiana that indicate a borrowing from the Spanish. Even spring rolls--the more refined version of egg rolls, which can most certainly be classified as turnovers--can be found almost anywhere in the nation where Chinese chefs have settled. Where American history is concerned, I find the Cornish pasties the most interesting, not because of their flavor especially but because of the uses to which they have been put in this country. The concept was brought here in the late 1700s and early 1800s with the influx of miners from Wales...Once the pasties were established in this country, it did not take long for the non-Welsh of the region to take to them with relish and add a distinctly American touch..."
---Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia, Joan Whitman compiler [Times Books:New York] 1985 (p. 461-2)

TURNOVERS

Turnovers are one of the most popular examples of portable pies. Pastry choices range from classic European puff paste to Mediterranean filo.

"A turnover is a sort of small, typically individual pie or pasty, in which the filling is placed on one side of a piece of rolled-out pastry and the other side is then turned over' to cover it, forming a semicircular shape. The term is first recorded at the end of the eighteenth century: an old woman preparing her turnovers, commonly called apple-pies' (Sporting Magazine, 1798). It is occasionally used for savoury fillings, such as meat, but a sweet fruit filling is the norm, and, as the above extract suggests, most turnovers are in fact apple turnovers."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 353)

The Oxford English Dictionary confirms the 1798 date reference above: "5. A kind of tart in which the fruit is laid on one half of the rolled out paste, and the other half turned over it; a child's sweetmeat resembling this. Also attrib. as turn-over shop. 1798 Sporting Mag. XI. 176 An old woman..preparing her turnovers, commonly called apple-pies. 1825 S. R. in Hone Every-day Bk. I. 1291 Our ‘tart’ and ‘turn-over’ shop. 1847 in HALLIWELL. 1882 Gd. Words 606 Venison pasties and apple turnovers and runlets of ale. 1892 Star 24 Dec. 3/2 There were sweets called turnovers, in which were coins of various values."

Culinary evidence confirms turnover-type recipes precede their appellation in both British and American culinary texts. A careful examination of ingredients and method bear witness:

[1753]
"Apple Pasties to Fry.
Pare and quarter apples, and boil them in sugar and water, and a stick of cinnamon, and when tender, put in a little white wine, the juice of a lemon, a piece of fresh butter, and a little ambergrease or orange-flower water; stir all together, and when it is cold put it in puff-paste, and fry them>"
---The Complete Housewife: or Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion, E. Smith, facsimile reprint of 1753 edition [Literary Services and Production Ltd.:London] 1968 (p. 154)

[1792]
"Apple Puffs.
Pare, quarter, and core six large apples, put them into a sauce-pan with a little water and lemon-peel, cover them close, and stew them gently till they are tender; take out the lemon-peel, and with a spoon put in a tea-spoonful of rose water, make a nice puff paste, roll in out thin to any small size you please, put in a little of the apple, turn the paste over, and close them with a knife; cut them either three-corner ways or square, or in any shape you please, ice them, and bake them in a moderate overn or tin or iron plates."
---The New Art of Cookery According to Present Practice, Richard Briggs [W. Spotswood, R. Campbell, and B. Johnson:Philadelphia] 1792 (p. 382)

[1841]
"Puffs.--Roll out puff paste nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and, with a small saucer, or tin cutter of that size, cut it into round pieces; place upon one side raspberry or strawberry jam, or any sort of preserved fruit, or stewed apples; wet the edges, fold over the other side, and press it round with the finger and thumb. Or cut the paste into the form of a diamond, lay on the fruit, and fold over the paste, so as to give it a triangular shape."
---The Good Housekeeper, Sarah Josepha Hale, facsimile reprint 1841 edition with new introduction by Janice (Jan) Bluestein Longone [Dover Publications:Mineola NY] 1996 (p. 85)

[1874?]
"Turnovers.--Make some good pastry, roll it out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, and stamp it in rounds from four to seven inches in diameter, lay fresh fruit and sugar, or jam, on one half of the pastry, moisten the edges, and turn the other half right over. Press the edges closely, ornament them in any way, and brush the turnovers with white of egg. Sprinkle a little powedered sugar over them, and bake on tins in a brisk oven. Serve on a dish covered with a neatly-folded napkin. Time to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probably cost, 1d. Each. Sufficient, one pound of pastry will make two dozen turnovers."
---Cassell's Dictonary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations [Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.:London] 1874? (p. 1017)

"Fruit Pasties or Turnovers.--Boil down fruit of any kind with a little sugar, and let it grow cold. Take one pound of puff pastes; cut it into as many pieces as you require pasties; roll out in a circular form, and put the fruit on one half, turn the other half over on the fruit, and pinch the edge, which should first be wetted with white of egg. Raw fruit may be used, but in this case the paste must be thicker, and not quite so rich. Meat, or savoury pasties, form the princial food of the agricultural classes in Cornwall; but a mixture of meat, potatoes, and turnips is more generally used for their pasties. Time for fruit pasties, twenty minutes. Sufficient for one dozen and a half."
---ibid (p. 233) [NOTE: this book also instructs the reader to refer to recipes for Fruit Pasties.]

[1902]
"Apple Turnover
Put one pint of flour into a bowl; add half a teaspoonful of salt, two level teaspoonfuls of baking powder; mix thoroughly, then rub into the mixture one tablespoonful of butter, and add sufficient milk to make a soft dough. Roll out in a sheet half an inch thick; cut with a biscuit cutter into circles. Put two tablespoonfuls of stewed apples on one-half the dough; fold over the other half, pinch the edges together; place these in a baking-pan, brush with milk, and bake for twenty minutes."
---Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book, Sarah Tyson Rorer [Arnold and Company:Philadelphia] 1902 (p. 590-1)

Related food? Apple pie.

CALZONES
Regarding the origin of calzones there are a couple of theories:

"Calzone means "pant leg" in Italian. Calzone are usually associated with Naples, where they can also be made with sausage and mozzarella cheese, but are found, famously, throughout southern Italy, sometimes deep-fried. Every town has its own variation...Carol Field, author of several books on Italian food, suggests that calzone may have existed in medieval Latin as early as 1170, according to a reference in Padua, although the historian Luigi Sada, also the author of several Apulian cookbooks, suggests a statute from Bisceglie around 1400 as being the first appearance of the word. Chef Carlo Middione, the author of The Food of Southern Italy, makes the plausible suggestion of a Muslim introduction in medieval Arab times. If this is true, then the calzone, not to mention the empanada, is related to the old fried pastry of the medieval Arab world, sanbusak....Sanbusak, an Arabic word that comes from Persian sanbusa, meaning anything triangular, which was first described as a stuffed pastry in the early ninth century by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim...a well-known author from Iraq."
---A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A. Wright [Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 563, 573)

"Calsones...a Sephardic Jewish stuffed pasta which is widely consumed in the Middle East. They may be square in shape like ravioli or in half-moon or oblong shapes. Calsones are mostly home made, using egg in the dough, and usually filled with a cheese and egg mixture. Calsones with reshteh were a famous Jewish dish in Aleppo, Syria. The calsones and reshteh were mixed together, dressed with melting butter, and served with yoghurt. As for the origins of calsones, Claudia Roden [in her book The Book of Jewish Food, 1996] suggests that they came to the Aleppo community with the Italian Jews who left Italy at various times, beginning in the 16th century, when there was a mass emigration eastwards following the expulsion of Jews from Italy." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 125) (calsone is the British spelling for calzone)

EMPANADAS
Empanadas are considered part of the gastronomic history of Spanish Galicia. The Empanada Festival is one of this region's major annual events. These portable pies were introduced to the "New World" by Spanish explorers and missionaries.

"Empanadas, meat and fish pies from Galicia, are rarely found elsewhere in Spain. One explanation for the popularity of empanadas in Galicia is that they suit the character of these northern peoples, for the pies hide their contents from public view, just as the Gallegos often remian aloof and secretive. The idea may be a bit farfetched, but there is little doubt that Gallegos make better meat pies than anyone else, using fillings as varied as the produce of Galicia. Most empanadas contain lots of onion and green or red pepper, in combination with meat or fish. The doughs take many different forms, from puff pastry to those made with cornmeal. There are other areas of Spain known for their pies, but these are called pasteles instead of empanadas."
---The Foods and Wines of Spain, Penelope Casas [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1982 (p. 52)
[NOTE: Ms. Casas mentions on p. 64 of this book that Empanada de Lomo (pork pie) is the most commonly prepared Galician pie.]

"Empanada. A Spanish and Latin American savoury turnover. Empanada' means covered with bread'; and bread dough may be used, but the usual covering is shortcrust pastry. Often the semicircular seam is decorated by twisting it at regular intervals. The pastry may be baked or deep fried. Fillings vary from one country or region to another. In Spain a mixture of minced meats and sausage is common, but in writing about empanadas in Galicia Janet Mendel [Traditional Spanish Cooking, Garnet Publishing, 1996] lists no fewer than 18 examples of fillings, ranging from clams to rabbit, sardines to pigeon, and octopus to ham. In S. And C. America and the southwest of the USA a similarly wide range of fillings are used. Mexican fillings are highly seasoned with chilli peppers."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 273)

• The history of Galician empanadas [In Spanish].
• Emapanda recipes, 1529 [Translated into English. Use your brower's "find" feature to locate recipes and history notes.]

PASTIES
These traditional Welsh meat-filled pies often served as a miner's lunch. When these laborers came to America to work the copper mines, they brought lunch with them. Efficient & portable, easily re-heated & ultimately delicious. Foods like these transcend time and place. If you have the opportunity to taste the real thing NEVER pass it up. After the experience, you will know why.

About Cornish pasties

Destination Pasty... UP Michigan (everywhere) & Rocky's in Wharton, NJ.

PIEROGI
"Pirog. The Russian word for pie, together with its diminutive pirozhki (plural), some from the word pir (meaning feast)...Pirozhki (pierogi in Poland) come in a variety of shapes including small half-moons, and may be either fried or baked. They are popular accompaniement to soups, especially clear broths and borshch, or as part of zakuski (hors d'oeuvres)."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 609-610)

In Poland, pierogi are more like ravioli; in Russia they are more like pie. Both recipes are generally considered "food of the people," as they are traditionally inexpensive and filling. Pierogi/pirogi made with choux pastry (buttery, flaky crusts) are 19th century recipes. Our general history notes on the topic of filled pasta/pastry here:

POLAND:
"Pierogi or Pierozki: dumplings or "dough pockets" made by preparing thinly rolled noodle dough, cutting into squares and filling them poaching the sealed triangles until cooked. Fillings may be of meat, mushrooms, cheese, cabbage, or potatoes--all seasoned. These are served with drawn butter, meat gravy, or sour cream. ---You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions, Thelma Barer-Stein [Firefly Books:Buffalo] 1999 (p. 350)

"...on the more modest end of the culinary scale, we come to buckwheat, which was primarily consumed in the villages. During the Middle Ages, only two types of buckwheat were known in Poland: Tartarian buckwheat ...called paganca in old Polish texts; and true culinary buckwheat...The popular dumplings made with buckwheat and known today in Southern Poland as pierogi ruskie did not enter Polish cookery until the nineteenth century, when they came to Poland from Russia."
---Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past, Maria Dembinska [University of Pennsylvania:Philadelphia] 1999 (p. 112)

RUSSIA:

"Pirog or Pirogi: a flaky envelope of dough that can be filled with almost anything. This turnover is usually made large enough to feed six. The largest is called Kilebiaka, while the smallest is called by the diminutive Piroshki. Pirojok is the singular, but is never used because who eats just one? After baking in the oven they are served piping hot, and a Slav will betray his origins by adding the crust and adding just a little more butter."
---You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions, Thelma Barer-Stein [Firefly Books:Buffalo] 1999 (p. 373)

"Pirogs and Pates...Pirogs (filled pastries) have always been essential for Russian festivities. "Pirog Day"...the third day after a marriage, was traditionally the time when the young bride offered guests a selection of pirogs and pirozhki. The quintessential pirog in Russian culture...were round, but Molokhovets (Elena Molokhovets as the author of an important 1861 Russian cookbook titled "A Gift fo Young Housewives") preferred rectangular ones. Pirozhki are small pirogs. Whether large or small, they come in many shapes and sizes with the doughs as varied as the fillings...Some have special names. Karavaj...is a large, round loaf that was part of the traditional offering of bread and salt, the Russian gesture of hospitality; rastegai is a small open-faced pastry with a fish filling htat was customarily served with ukhas and other fish soups; kurnik is another festive pie, one that was often served at weddings. ..Molokhovets' pirogs encased the filling in pastry; with a few exceptions, her pates just had a top layer of pastry or none at all. Her pirogs tended to include pieces of meat, fish, or poultry with grains and vegetables and almost no forcemeat (stuffing)..."
---Classic Russian Cooking, Elena Molokhovets' "A Gift to Young Housewives," 1861, translated and introduced by Joyce Toomre [Indiana University Press:1992] (p. 273)

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Cream puffs & eclairs

Choux a la creme, profiteroles and cream puffs are said to have originated in Renaissance France and Italy. Choux paste is different from other types of pastry because when cooked, it rises and the finished product has a hollow center. As was the custom of the day, these holes were variously filled with sweet or savory fillings. Cream puffs, as we know them today, are usually filled with custard or French cremes. Chocolate (as a glaze or filling) was an 18th century addition.

This is the legend:

"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..."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Jenifer Harvey Lang, editor [Crown:New York] 1988 (p. 777-8)

These are the facts:

"The real creation of choux paste is complex and cannot be established with any certainty, not least because its manufacture is a relatively simple process and it is possible that it was independently created in many places and at various times. In principle, choux paste requires only four ingredients: water, fat, flour and egg. The incorporation of an egg into what is effectively hot-water paste--and a fairly obvious innovation for an inquisitive cook--would produce a kind of choux paste. Tracing early cookery receipts is beset with difficulties, not least because authors heedlessly repeat foundation-myth andedotes. Elizabeth David, writing about the Florentine cooks that Catherine Medici was said to have brought with her to France in 1533, states, "Those cooks...are part of a myth originating in mid-nineteenth-century France, perhaps in the imagination of of of the popular hsitorical novelists who flourished at that period, and certainly without existence in historical fact...Researchers are also faced with establishing the meaning of archaic terms and technical expressions. The nomenclature of of cookery is complicated not only by difficulties in establish early usage, but also by the lack of conformity of usage, not helped by the idiosyncrasies of early-modern spelling. A single cookery method or culinary product may be concealed under a whole variety of labels or (conversely and just a confusing) a single term may apply to one or more different methods or receipts. Such etymological considerations--a focal point for most investigations by cookery historians--bear upon choux...pastry...Historically, we find at least two pastries referred to as 'choux'. It seems likely that the earliest use of the term in England was by was of imported translations of French seventeenth-century cookery books. In La Varenne's The French Pastry Cook of 1656, the reader is told of 'The manner how to make a little Puff-paste Bunns, called in French Choux.' But this paste is neither the puff-paste so beloved by French and English cooks from the sixteenth century or earlier--and known in France as pate feuilletee and in England as butter pasted and puff or puft paste--nor is it what today we would recognize as choux paste. The ingredients for La Varenne's reciept includes a fist-size of fresh cheese...bruised with a little flour, two eggs, a further handful of flour or salt. When mixed, this is spread 'as thick as a finger', baked in two pieces and, once cooked, spread with butter, sugar and rosewater. The two pieces are sandwiched together and warmed in the oven, then decorated with sugar and preserved lemon. La Varenne also writes about this type of paste made into morsels the size of small eggs. So here the term 'choux' seems to apply to both paste and to the small buns made from this paste. With a little imagination, a round cooked choux bun, or fritter, resembles the shape of a small cabbage. With this bun shape--choux being French for cabbage--we can see (literally) the reason for the name of the paste. These cheese-based pastes can be traced back to at least the thirteenth century where similar receipts for fritters appear in anonymous Andalusian cookbooks...Massailot's ingredients for 'Benioles', or Petit Choux, are simliar to La Varenne's...In England one of the several meanings of the words 'chou' and 'puffs' is amost identical to that of La Varenne's and Massailot's 'choux' paste. Cotgrave, as early as 1611, describes 'petit chou' as 'puffe-cake, or loafe, made of butter, cheese, fine meal, and yolks of egges.' He tells us that there are two kinds, 'one round, and plumpe like an apple; the other also round, but much flatter'...in 1706 'petits choux' crops up in Edward Phillips' dictionary, New World of English Words, 'a sort of Paste for garninshing made of fat Cheese, Flower, Eggs, Salt, etc. bake'd in a Pye-pan, and Ic'd over with fine Sugar'...there are several receipts found in early European cookbooks and manuscripts that broadly refer to what today's cooks call 'choux paste,' or what we have referred to as 'twice-cooked' pastry. The original French name was pate a chaud...Importantly, the second cooking of these pastries results in the formation of a pouch or pocket--ideal for filling with savoury of sweet mixture. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England there were other words that sometimes (but by no means always) denoted a choux paste product, including 'benets'...'puffs' and certain types of 'fritters'...Certainly the idea of cooking a paste of flour, butter and liquid and then adding eggs to produce a small puffed pastry cake was known to some French cooks at the start of the seventeenth century...But choux paste, though by other names, can be found in even earlier books and manuscripts. Perhaps the earliest extant English receipt if found in A Book of Cookrye (1591) first published in 1584. The ingredients for 'Benets' or "Bennets'( a kind of fritter) are practially identical to those fo John Eveyln's 'French Fritters.'...The refined French name for these French Friters is 'Beignets Souffles'...Eveyln tellus us that these fritters are of French origin, and this may well be so. However, we can find several receipts recognizable as choux paste in the German cook Sabina Welserin's manuscript of 1553. They are more explicit than any contemporary French manuscripts and indicate long-standing familiarity with the technique. One hazards a guess that it originated independently of Queen Catherine's Popelin, or that it derived from an earlier common source...Most of the earliest receipts for choux paste are for fritters...The term 'choux' had not settled down [in the 18th century] to today's meaning...Today, the terms 'Cream Bun or Puff', 'profiterole' and 'choux' seems to have settled down; the ambiguity no longer an issue."
---"Powches, Puffs and Profiteroles: Early Choux Paste Receipts," David Potter, Petits Propos Culinaires 73 [Prospect Books] 2003 (p. 25-40)

"Choux pastry is a thick batter made from flour, milk, butter, and eggs. Its most typical application is in the making of small round buns (as used for profiteroles) known in French as choux, literally cabbages, from their shape--hence pate a choux, the pastry used for making them. The first reference to the term in English comes in the 1706 edition of Edward Phillips's New World of English Words: Petits Choux, a sort of paste for garnishing, made of fat Cheese, Flour, Eggs, Salt, etc., bak'd in a Pye-pan, and Ic'd over with fine Sugar.' But it was not really until the late nineteenth century that it achieved any sort of general currencey in English."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 75)

"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. The nuns of Lima had a great reputation after the sixteenth century, and chocolate owes a great deal to the convents. The puff pastries called feuillantines were first made in the seventeenth century in a convent of that name...Sugar and chocolate had now arrived on the scene; from the time of Louis XIV onwards those delicacies became extremely popular...Gastronomy flourished in the nineteenth century...Fauvel, a chef working for the famous pastry cook Chiboust, invented the Genoese sponge and also had a hand in the creation of the gateau Saint-Honore, so called in honour of the patron saint of pastrycooks. It is garnished with choux pastry puffs, and choux pastry is also used in making eclairs and choux a la creme, and a kind of chocolate eclair known as the religieuse (nun), though no one knows why."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992 (pages 243-244)

"Profiteroles are small round choux-pastry buns with a filling. This can be either savoury or sweet, but by far the commonest manifestation of the profiterole is with a cream filling and a covering of chocolate sauce, and piled in large quanitities, in the more ambitious type of restaurant, into a sort of pyramid. The word originated in French as a diminutive form of profit, and so etymologically means 'small gains'--and indeed it may to begin with have denoted a 'little something extra' cooked long with the master's main dish as a part of the servants' perks."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 269)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, profiteroles entered the Englsih language from French in the 16th century:
"App. < Middle French, French profiterole (although this is first attested later in the sense relevant to sense 1: 1549; 1881 in sense 2) < profit PROFIT n. + -erole, diminutive suffix (extended form of -ole -OLE suffix1). French profiterole is attested slightly earlier in its literal sense ‘small profit’: 1542.] . 1. A type of savoury cake or dumpling, (perh.) baked in ashes. Obs. ?1515 A. BARCLAY Egloges IV. sig. Bijv, To tost white sheuers, and to make prophytrolles And after talkyng, oftymes to fyll the bolles. 1702 F. MASSIALOT Court & Country Cook 207 A Ragoo is to be made..with which the Potage is to be garnish'd, the Profitrolle-loaf being laid in the middle. 1727 R. BRADLEY Family Dict. s.v. Carp, They likewise make a pottage of profitrolles with Carp flesh minced."

Related food? Puff paste & Gateau St. Honore.

About eclairs
The food history encyclopedias (including the Larousse Gastronomique) and reference books all describe eclairs but provide little if any details regarding their origin. This probably means the eclair is a product of food evolution. There is some conjecture that perhaps Antonin Careme (1784-1833), a famous pastry chef for French royalty might have created something akin to eclairs. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term "eclair" in the English language to 1861 "Vanity Fair [magazine]2 Feb 50/1 A Waiter, whereon, stood..a plate of macaroons, eclairs and sponge cake." In French, the word eclair means a flash of lightning.

"Eclair. The primary meaning of eclair in French is lightning', and one (not very convincing) explanation advanced for its application to these cream-filled choux-pastry temptations is that it was suggested by the light gleaming from their coating of fondant icing."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2003 (p. 117)

The oldest recipe we have for eclairs in an American cookbook was published in 1884:

"Cream cakes
1 cup hot water
1/2 teaspoonful salt
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup pastry flour
5 eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately

Boil the water, salt, and butter. When boiling, add the dry flour, stir well for five minutes, and when cool add the eggs. This is such a stiff mixture, many find it easier to mix with the hand, and some prefer to add the eggs whole, one at a time. When well mixed, drip, in tablespoonfuls, on a buttered baking-pan, some distance apart. Bake twenty to thirty minutes, or till brown and well pugged. Split when cool, and fill with cream.
Eclairs--bake the Cream Cake mixture in pieces four inches long and one and a half wide. When cool, split and fill with cream. Ice with chocolate or vanilla frosting.

Cream for Cream Cakes and Eclairs
1 pint milk, boiled
2 tablespoonfuls cornstarch
3 eggs, well beaten
3/4 cup sugar
1 saltspoonful salt, or
1 teaspoonful butter

Wet the cornstarch in cold milk, and cook in the boiling milk ten minutes. Beat the eggs; add the sugar and the thickened milk. Cook in the double boiler five minutes. Add the salt or butter, and when cool, flavor with lemon, vanilla, or almond."
---Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D.A. Lincoln [1884] (p. 389)

Related foods? Napoleons & Baklava

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Pot pie

Most early cookbooks do not contain recipes for "pot pie." This was a description of cooking method rather than a recipe. Notes here:

"Potpie....A crusted pie made with poultry or meat, and, usually chopped vegetables. The term, which first appeared in American print in 1785, probably refers to the deep pie pans or pots used to bake pies in, and it has remained primarily an Americanism. The most popular pot pies have been chicken, Beef, and pork. The first frozen pot pie was made with chicken in 1951 by the C. A. Swanson Company."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 254)

"Pot pies have a long history in most Northern European cuisines, and if they were a specialty anywhere, it was in the British Isles. And a pot pie must be made in a pot that is completely lined with crust. Originally, this crust was not eaten; it was there to keep the taste of the iron pot away from the food."
---"ONE CRUST OR TWO?" Leslie Land, Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1992 (p. H11)

"Pot pies are as old as pastry-making itself. In the royal households of France and England, savory tarts were among a chef's most elaborate dishes...Sad to say, pot pies seem a relic of an age of family restaurants where a cook actually took his time to make such items--before such restaurants were conglomerated and homogenized. The last steamy gasp of the traditional pot pie may well have been the arrival of the frozen pot pie in supermarkets of the early 1950s, which made the idea of making one at home or in a restaurant obsolete, despite the lack of fresh flavor...Pot pies are as old as pastry making itself. And in the royal households of France and England, savory tarts were often among the most elaborate of dishes in a chef's repertoire, especially during the Elizabethan era, when the crusts would be decorated with heraldic devices, flowers, and curlicues of painstaking skill. Inside might be anything at all, including the famous "four-and-twenty blackbirds" or even a small child (unbaked and uneaten, I assure you). In America, where far more households had baking ovens than in Europe, the tart became known as the pot pie by the end of the 18th century, and was a fixture of American kitchens. In most cases it referred to a casserole dish topped with a pastry crust rather than to a mixture of ingredients baked in a pastry crust, so that the casserole could easily be hung above the fire or set on a grid to be baked by indirect heat. They were particularly welcome at church suppers because they were so easy to transport and were very festive at any family table."
---POT PIES , By: Mariani, John, Bellamy, Gail, Restaurant Hospitality, April 1998 (p. 80)

About chicken pot pie
Primary evidence suggests recipes for chicken pot pie (in concept, but not name) were known in England as far back as the Middle Ages. As one would expect, these early meat pies were quite different from ones we know today. Robert May's Accomplist Cook [1685] lists several recipes for poultry pies (chicken, turkey, pheasant etc.). These generally still relied on Medieval flavors: pepper, salt, nutmeg, orange juice, lemon, chestnuts, mace, sugar, gooseberries, barberries, grapes etc. Vegetables were sometimes employed:

" artichock bottoms, or the tops of boild sparagus...Otherways for the liquoring or garnishing of these Pies, for variety you may put in them boil'd skirrets, bottom of artichokes boil'd, or boil'd cabbidge lettice...whole onions being baked...Or bake them with candied lettice stalks, potatoes..."
---The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May, facsimile 1685 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 2000 (p. 212-3)

The oldest American recipes we have specifically titled "pot pie" are from 1839

An Apple Pot-Pie
Rub the bottom and sides of a porridge-pot, or small oven, with butter, and then with dry flour. Roll out some pieces of plain or standing paste about half an inch thick, line the sides of the pot or oven with the pieces of paste, letting them nearly touch the bottom. Having pared and sliced from the cores some fine cooking apples, nearly fill the oven with them; pour in enough water to cook them tender, put pieces of paste on the top, or put a paste all over the top, and bake it with moderate heat, having a fire both on and under the oven. When the apples are very soft, the crust brown, and the liquor quite low, turn the crust bottom upwards in a large dish, put the apples evenly over it, strew on a large handful of brown sugar, and eat it warm or cold, with sweet milk. This is quite a homely pie, but a very good one."
---the Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, facsimile reprint of 1839 edition stereotyped by Shepard & Stearns:Cincinnati [Image Graphics:Paducah KY] (p. 267-8)

A Peach Pot-Pie
A Peach pot pie, or cobler, as it is often termed, should be made of clingstone peaches, that are very ripe, and then pared and sliced from the stones. Prepare a pot or oven with paste, as directed for the apple pot-pie, put in the prepared peaches, sprinkle on a large handful of brown sugar, pour in plenty of water to cook the peaches without burning them, though there should be but very little liquor or syrup when the pie is done. Put a paste over the top, and bake it with moderate heat, raising the lid occasionally, to see how it is baking. When the crust is brown, and the peaches very soft, invert the crust on a large dish, put the peaches evenly on, and grate loaf sugar thickly over it. Eat it warm or cold. Although it is not a fashionable pie for company, it is very excellent for family use, with cold sweet milk." ---ibid (p. 268)

[1845]
"Pot Pie or Soup
Scraps and crumbs of meat make a very good dinner, when made into soup. Put all your crumbs of meat into the dinner-pot. Slice in two onions, a carrot; put in a little salt and pepper, and water enough to cover it; then cover it with a crust, made with cream tartar...Stew it one hour and a half, or two hours. A flour thickening should be put in five minutes before you take it up. You make bake your potatoes, or slice them, and cooke them with the meat."
---The New England Economical Housekeeper and Family Receipt Book, Mrs. E.A. Howland [E.P. Walton and Sons:Montpelier VT] 1845 (p. 56)

[1877]
Chicken pot pie, Buckeye Cookery, Estelle Woods Wilcox

About cobbler.

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Pumpkin pie

Food historians tell us members of the gourd family (melons, cucurbits, etc.) of all shapes and sizes were known to ancient old world cooks. Pumpkins, however, are new world foods.

ABOUT PUMPKINS

• National Geographic
• UCLA

ABOUT EARLY PUMPKIN COOKERY
Recipes for stewed pumpkins tempered with sugar, spices and cream wrapped in pastry trace their roots to Medieval cuisine. We find several period European/Middle Eastern recipes combining fruit, meat and cheese similarly spiced and presented. The Columbian Exchange [16th century] flooded the "old world" with "new world" foods. These new foods (pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, corn etc.) were incorporated/assimilated/adapted into traditional European cuisines, each in their own way and time. Culinary evidence confirms it took several generations before many "new world" foods were accepted by the general public. Pumpkins seem to have skipped this honeymoon period. They were similar to "old world" gourds and squash, and superior in flavor. They were also just as easy to cultivate. As such, pumpkins (aka pompions) were embraced almost immediately.

If pumpkins are a "New World" food, why are they sometimes listed as ingredients in Medieval European recipes? If you notice, these references are usually found in Medieval cooking books with modernized recipes. The original recipes simply call for squash or gourds. Why substitute pumpkin? Some Medieval recipes for members of the curcurbit family (gourds, calabash, cucumbers, melons) are more palatable to contemporary tastes if you make them with pumpkin. It's also readily available.

"3. Winter Squash or Pumpkin Soup...The curcurbits are a large, rich family including cucumbers, melons, and squashes. But the Old World knew neither the winter squash (Curcurbita pepo) nor the pumpkin (Curcurbita maxima), both of which were brought from the Americas. If we can trust the title of the recipe, Congordes, and if we think of the depictions of squash (zucche) harvests in the many manuscripts comprising the Tacuinum sanitatis--a medical treatise of Arab origin that lists the medicinal properties of various foods--the cook is probably dealing here with gourds (Lagenaria vulgaris). These came originally from southern Asia, and were well known in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. But without fresh gourds to hand, you can prepare this soup with winter squash or pumpkin."
---The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, & Silvano Serventi, translated by Edward Schneider [University of Chicago Press:Chicago] 1998 (p. 55-6)

"As for pumpkin pie, in particular, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England "people of substance" were familiar with a form of pumpkin pie that both followed the medieval tradition of "rich pies of mixed ingredients" and also bore resemblance to the consumption of apple-stuffed pumpkins typically engaged in by people of lesser substance...Pumpkin pie went out of fashion in Britain during the eighteenth century. Perhaps Edward Johnson reflected this emerging attitude in the 1650s when he offered as a sign of New England's progress toward prosperity the fact that in most households people were eating "apples, pears, and quince tarts instead of their former Pumpkin Pies." Pumpkin had been superceded by the more civilized fruits (free of association with the natives), of which the settlers had first been deprived. Such an anticipation that pumpkin pie was on the way out was premature, as far as the developments on this side of the Atlantic were concerned."
---America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking, Keith Stavely & Kathleen Fitzgerald [University of North Carolina Press:Chapel Hill] 2004 (p. 67-8)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Please ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

"Among vegetables, the Northeastern Indians made particularly lavish use of squash, even more than other American Indians, and especially of pumpkin. Both squash and pumpkin were baked, usually by being placed whole in the ashes or embers of a dying fire (in the case of squash, the acorn and butternut varieties were preferred) and they were moistened afterwards wtih some form of animal fat, or maple syrup, or honey; and both were also made into soup. When pumpkin was made into a soup, it often underwent some enriching which converted it into something more like a stew. A seventeenth century Oneida recipe specified that pumpkin should be "boiled with meat to the consistency of potato soup."
---Eating in America: A History, Waverley Root & Richard de Rochemont [William Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 41)

A SURVEY OF PUMPKIN PIE RECIPES THROUGH TIME
The earliest European recipes for pumpkin pie appear in the 17th century. They are titled "pompion." The early English use of the word "pompion" (French for "pumpkin") may imply these recipes originated in France.

[1653]
"Potage of pumpkin.
Seethe well your pumpkin, so that it will be more thickened than ordinary, then fry a chibol with butter, and put it in with salt, and serve with pepper." (p. 213)
[NOTE: potage is akin to soup]

"Potage of pumpkin with milk.
After it is well sod, pass it through a straining pan, and leave not much broth in it, because of the milk which you must put in it. When it is well seasoned with milk and a little butter, stove or soak your bread, and serve with pepper if you will." (p. 213-4)

"Tourte of pumpkin.
Boile it with good milk, pass it through a straining pan very thick, and mix it with sugar, butter, a little salt and if you will, a few stamped almonds; let all be very thin. Put it in your sheet of paste; bake it. After it is baked, besprinkle it with sugar and serve."
---The French Cook, Francois Pierre La Varenne [1653], Translated into English in 1653 by I.D.G., Introduced by Philip and Mary Hyman [East Sussex:Southover Press} 2001 (p. 199-200)
[NOTE: the word pumpkin is thought to derive from the old French word pompion, which in turn is derived from the Greek pepon, meaning melon. The tip of this complicated linguistic puzzle!]

[1685]
"To make a Pumpion Pie.
Take a pound of pumpion and slice it, a handful of thyme, a little rosemary, and sweet marjoram stripped off the stalks, chop them small, then take cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and a few cloves all beaten, also ten eggs, and beat them, them mix and beat them all together, with as much sugar as you think fit, then fry them like a froise, after it is fried, let it stand till it is cold, then fill your pie with this manner. Take sliced apples sliced thin round ways, and lay a layer of the froise, and a layer of apples with currants betwixt the layers. While your pie is sitted, put in a good deal of sweet butter before your close it. When the pie is baked, take six yolks of eggs, some white-wine or verjuyce, and make a caudle of this, but not too thick, but cut up the lid, put it in, and stir them well together whilst the eggs and pumpion be not perceived, and so serve it up."
---The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May, facisimile reprint 1685 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 2000 (p. 224)
[NOTE: according to the glossary in the back of this book, a "Froise" was like a pancake or omelette.]

[1796] "Pompkin (pie)
American Cookery, Amelia Simmons

[1824]
"Pumpkin pudding
Stew a fine sweet pumpkin till soft and dry, rub it through a sieve, mix with the pulp six eggs quite light, a quarter of a pound of butter, half a pint of new milk, some pounded ginger and nutmeg, a wine glass of brandy, and sugar to your taste. Should it be too liquid, stew it a little dryer; put a paste round 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."
--- The Virginia House-Wife, Mary Randolph, with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 154)

Modern interpretation here:

"Abigail Adams' Pumpkin Pie
1 1/2 cups pumpkin
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger root, grated
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup dark rum, or brandy
3 eggs, lighly beaten
Pecans
Whipped cream
10-inch pie shell, unbaked

Mix all ingredients together and our into the prepared pastry shell. Bake at 425 degrees F. For 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F. And bake for 40 minutes more, or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Garnish with pecans and whipped cream flavoured with rum or brandy."
---The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook, Mary Donovan et al, [Montclair Historical Society:Montclair NJ] 1975 (p. 34)
[NOTE: If you are, or will be serving this to people under 21, please OMIT THE ALCOHOL.]

You can examine several 19th century American recipes courtesy of Michigan State University. Recipe search: pumpkin pie

Of course, you can always make your pie from scratch with real pumpkins!

Related food? Sweet potato pie.

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Quiche

The practice of baking sweet and savory dishes composed of eggs, cream, and spices in pastry shells is ancient. Quiche, as we know to today, evolved from Ancient Roman patinea (cheesecake) and Medieval European tarts.

Medieval recipes for a Tart in Ember Day (Ember day was a Christian meatless day) and Tart de Bry quite resemble modern quiche.

Food historians place the modern recipe for quiche in (what is currently) the Lorraine region of France. In medieval times, this area was known as Lothringen, a Germanic kingdom.

"Quiche. An open tart filled with a mixture of beaten eggs, creme fraiche and pieces of bacon, served hot as a first course or hors d'oeuvre. Originating on Lorraine (the name comes from the German "Kuchen," meaning cake), it has become a classic of French cuisine and is also widely enjoyed in other countries. Its origins go back to the 16th century; in Nancy, where it is a specialty, its local name is feouse. Quiches used to be made from bread dough, but now shortcrust or puff pastry is used. In some parts of Lorraine any pastry tart filled with migaine (eggs and cream) mixed with onions, cream cheese or pumpkin is called a quiche, and elsewhere quiches can be made with cheese, ham, bacon, onion, mushrooms, seafood and various other ingredients."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 957)

"A quiche is a pastry cooked a cooked savoury custard cintaining items such as vegetables, bacon, or cheese. It is a specialty of the Alsace-Lorraine region, whcih has been bandied between France and Germany over the centuries, and the term quiche itself is a French verison of kuche, a word from the German dialect of Lorraine...The authentic quiche Lorraine contains only smoked bacon in adition ot the cream-and-egg custard, but many alternative versions have grwon up that include cheese and onion."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 274-5)

"Quiche. A French [dish]...most prominent in Lorraine...It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the term became current, and it then meant a tart with a filling of egg and cream...The version now well known, which includes bacon (and sometimes cheese) in the filling, was originally a variant known as quich au lard. Whereas the original could be eaten on meatless days, this variant--now known around the world as quiche Lorraine--could not. Nonetheless, a quiche Lorraine is perceived as something with only a slight meat content. This may account for the reputation it acquired in some English-speaking countries, where it only became familiar in the latter part of the 20th century, as a dish not suitable for "he-men" or " real men." At the end of the 20th century the quiche has become the subject of innuerable variations..."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 644)

ABOUT QUICHE IN THE UNITED STATES

"Although a rudimentary quiche appeared in Irma Rombauer's self-published Joy of Cooking (1931), Hot Quiche Lorraine Tartlets in June Platt's Plain and Fancy Cookbook (1941), and a full-sized Quiche Lorraine in the 1951 Joy of Cooking, quiche madness didn't descend upon us until the late 1970s and go-go 80s, when chefs outdid themselves dreaming off-the-wall combos..."
---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 206)

"In fact, the first quiche recipes to become popular in America were those for the egg-onion-and-bacon tar called "quiche Lorraine," which was extremely fashionable in the 1970s as a luncheon, brunch, or appetizer dish in the United States."
---Encyclopedia of Amercan Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 260)

"In a review of New York's Leopard restaurant in the February 1970 issue of Gourmet, Donald Aspinwall Allan praised the appetizers because "there is always a good quiche," including onion, ham, leek, or anchovy and olive. Restaurants and caterers soon learned that while quiche was both a popular and hearty appetizer, it was also sturdy, and could be held for hours...Quiche's enduring popularity into the Seventies had a great deal to do with the scope it allowed creative cooks. As one Bon Appetit reader commented, while inquiring after the recipe for the moussaka quiche...served at The Cottage Crest in Massachusetts, "There seems to be no end to culinary imagination when it comes to making quiches."...Gourmet (Octyober 1971) even published a recipe for cranberry-carrot dessert quiche to be served with whipped cream. Plain old quiche Lorraine--with cheese, of course--was still around, but it was generally considered much too boring...By the early Eighties Americans had been served too many quiches...Even Craig Claiborne, quiche's early promoter, decared that he wouldn't be caught dead serving it."
---Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads, Sylvia Lovegren [Simon & Schuster:New York] 1995 (p. 317)

About the gastronomy of the Lorraine Region Lorraine region of France.

A SELECTION OF QUICHE LORRAINE RECIPES

[1903]
1230 Quiche a la Lorraine (for 10 persons)
Line an 18-20 cm (7-8 in) plain or fluted flan case with ordinary short paste taking care that the sides are a little higher than the rim of the case. Cover the base with thin rashers of bacon which have been blanched and lightly fried in butter. These my be arranged alternatively with slices of Gruyere cheese but the addition of cheese is optional and is not correct as far as local custom is concerned. Fill the flan with a mixture made of 4 dl (14 fl oz or 1 3/4 U.S. cups) cream, 3 eggs and a pinch of salt. Finish by dotting the surface with 25 g (1 oz) butter cut in small pieces; bake in a moderate oven for 30-35 minutes and cut into triangles whilst just warm."
---The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery, Escoffier [Le Guide Cuiliniare 1903], The First Translation into English by H.L. Cracknell and R.J. Kaufmann [Wiley:New York] 1979 (p. 148)
[NOTE: This recipe is included in the chapter: Hors-d'oeuvre. Escoffier also provides a recipe for Quiches au Jambon.]

[1927]
"Quiche Lorraine For the dough: 200 grams (7 ounces) of flour; 100 grams (3 « ounces, 7 tablespoons) of butter; 3/4 deciliter ( 2 2/1 fluid ounces, scant 1/3 cup) of water; a pinch of salt.

For the filling: aobut 200 grams (7 ounces) of lean bacon; 50 grams (1 3/4 ouces, 3 « tablespoons) of butter; a good 1/2 liter (generous 2 cups) or ordinary cream, completely fresh; 5 medium eggs; 2 nice pinches of salt

A tart pan with fluted sides about 25 centimeters (10 inches) in diameter

Procedure. Prepare the dough as directed...kneading it twice. Let it rest for 1 hour. Meanshile, trim the bacon of its rind, then cut into it small slices 1/2 centimeter (3/16 inch) thick. Blanche tem...and drain them. With the rolling pin, roll out the dough as for a tart into a nice round pancake that has an even thickness of at least 12 centimeter (3/16 inch) and a diameter of 25-26 centimeters (10-10 1/2 inches). Slide your two hands under the dough to transfer it to a tart pan that has been generously buttered; with the ends of your fingers, press the dough into the bottom and particularly onto the fluted sides The fold the dough over the sides and pass the rolling ping over it to cut off the excess. Beast the eggs as for an omelet and salt them, then gradually mix the cream into them. Divide the buter into thin slices and spread them out over the bottom ocf the quiche. Place the bacon on top, pressing lightly on it so that the peices stick to the bottom and will not float to the surface when the custard is poured into it. The cover everything with the custard, without allowing any to spill onto the sides of the dough. Carefully slide the tart pan into the ovenl a good medium heat coming mostly from the bottom. Allow 30-35 minutes for cooking."
---La Bonne Cuisine, Madame E. Saint-Ange, 1927 edition translated and with an introduction by Paul Aratow, forward by Madeleine Kamman [Ten Speed Press:Berkeley CA] 2005 (p. 702)
[NOTE: We have a copy of the original 1927 French edition. If you would like the original recipe please let us know. Happy to fax or mail.]

[1946]
"Quiche Lorraine
tart pastry...for 8 to 10-inch pan
6 slices bacon, not too thin
6 ozs. Swiss cheese, thinly sliced
2 cups milk
3 eggs and 1 yolk, beaten
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
a little nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter
Line an 8 to 10-inch pie plate with the tart pastry. Cut bacon slices in two and broil them. (If bacon is very salty, parboil it and drain before broiling.) Overlap slices of broiled bacon and cheese over the bottom of the pastry. Mix together eggs, flour, salt, and nutmeg, and combine with the milk. Melt butter and let it continue cooking until it starts to brown, then add it to the custard mixture and pour it all over the bacon and cheese. Bake in a moderately hot oven of 375 degrees until custard is set and brown on top, about 35 to 40 minutes. Serve warm. Serves 6."
---Louis Diat's Home Cookbook: French Cooking for Americans [J.B. Lippincott:Philadelphia] 1946 (p. 76)

[1963] "Quiche Lorraine, although it seems to be the most well known, is only one of a series of generally simple-to-make and appetizing entrees. A quich is a mixture of cream and bacon, such as the quiche Lorraine, or cheese and milk, or tomatoes and onions, or crab, or anything else whcih is combined with eggs, poured into a pastry shell, and baked int he oven until it puffs and browns. It is practically foolproof, and you can invent your own combinations. Serve it with a salad, hot French bread, and a cold white wine; follow it with fruit, and you have a perfect lunch or supper menu. Or let it be the first course of your dinner. You can also make tiny quiches for hot hors d'oeurvres."
---Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, Julia Child [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1963 (p. 146)

[1972]
"Quiche Lorraine," (Cream and Bacon Quiche)
6 to 8 pieces thick-sliced bacon
An 8-inch partially cooked pastry shell placed on a buttered baking sheet
3 eggs (U.S. graded "large")
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt
Pinch of pepper and nutmeg
1 to 2 Tb butter
(Preheat oven to 375 degrees.)
Slice bacon into 1/4-inch pieces and brown lightly in a frying pan; drain and spread in bottom of pastry shell. Beat eggs, cream, and seasonings in a bowl to blend. Just before baking, pour cream mixture into the shell, filling to within 1/8 inch of the top. Cut butter into bits and distribute over the cream. Bake in upper third of oen for 25 to 30 minutes, until quiche has puffed and browned, and a small knife, plunged into custard, comes out clean. Serve hot, warm, or cold; quiche will sink slighly as it cools."
---The French Chef Cookbook, Julia Child [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1972 (p. 240-1)

Related foods?
Cheesecake, tarts, pizza & souffle.

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Refrigerator Pie

Refrigerator pies (aka icebox pies) descend from Refrigerator Cake and other no-bake recipes made popular during the Great Depression. There are dozens of recipe variations. Pinapple is one of the perennial favorites. Crusts range from standard pastry shell to crushed cracker (graham) and cookie (gingernaps, vanilla wafers, chocolate wafers) crumbs. The recipe ingredients some folks list are comglomerations of various brand products made by competing companies (Jell-O is Kraft; Hydrox is Sunshine) so it is unlikey the recipe was printed on the back of a box. Similar recipes, however, using Oreos or Famous Chocolate Wafers, might have been on a box. This explains why some folks call this recipe Jell-O Pie. Recipes like Refrigerator Pie easily adapt to whatever the cook has on hand.

[1931]
"An innovation in cookery, which offsets every possibility of failure and offers a light, dainty, fluffy dessert, fit to be set before the most fastidious taste, is the sunshine ice box pie. Begin by making the family's favorite pie crust or the regualtion ofne of 1 cupful of flour, 3 tablespoonfuls of shortening, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and enough ice water to mix. Line a deep pie pan and bake in a slow oven so as to dry out the pastry. When it is light brown remove it from the stove to cool. To make the filling, separate the yolks and whites of 4 eggs. Beat yolks and whites separately. To the whites add 1/2 cupful of sugar and beat until very stiff. To the yolks andd 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice and a grated rind of 2 lemons, a pinch of salt and 1/2 cupful of sugar. Dissolve for 5 minutes 1/2 tablespoonful of gelatine in 1-3 cupful of cold water. Place the yolk micture in a double boiler, stirring constantly until the liquid is thickened and creamy. Remove it from the fire and add the gelatin. Fold the pie crust and set it in the ice box ntil time to serve. Just before serving spread the top of the pie with a thin layer of whipped cream. This pie keeps for days.">br? ---"A Novel Ice Box Pie," Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 1931 (p. 6)

[1932]
"Pie is always acceptable as a dessert no matter what the season. We are sometiems reluctant about serving it in warm weather bcause we dislike to heat the oven. This is no longer an excuse for not having it because there are the uncooked varieties, the ones which require no heat. They are sometimes called refrigerator pies. Refrigerator pies usually have crumb crusts. Corn flake crumbs are excellent for this purpose. They have a good color and add a distinctive flavor. The crust may be made in two different ways."
---"Home Service Bureau Conducted by Marian Manners Timeline Suggestions...What is Your Favorite?," Marian Manners, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1932 (p. A7) [NOTE: this snippet does not provide a recipe or elaborate on the "two ways" of crust making.]

[1933]
"Those gorgeous creations of lady fingers and whipped cream and nuts and macaroons known as refrigerator cakes have long been great favorites...But for the times when a less rich and elaborate creation is in order, good cooks of 1933 have opened up a whole new bag of tricks. In place of so much cream, for instance, they are using mixtures that depend more on eggs and cornstarch and gelatin and marshmallows for the thickening ingredient. Instead of making these desserts always in the form of the deep loaf cake, they are making them in pie plages to be cut exactly like pies. And in place of lady fingers or sliced sponge cake or angel food, they are using all sorts of sweetened wafers such as graham crackers, chocolate or vanilla wafers, gingersnaps. To show you what I mean here is a recipe for orange pie...

Orange Refrigerator Pie
First soak 1 1/2 tablespoons gelatin in 3 tablespoons cold water. Then turn this into 1/2 cup boiling water in the top of double boiler, and stir till dissolved. Next stir in 4 tablespoons sugar. Let mixture cool. Then add 1 cup strained orange juice and 1 tablespoon strained lemon juice. Put some ice water in bottom of double boiler and set the top part into it. Let stand till mixture starts to set. Then beat with rotary beater with rotary beater. Next fold into the mixture 1/2 cup of diced orange and 2 egg white beaten stiff. For the crust to this pie, use either vanilla wafers or gingersnaps. Crush or grind enough of them to make a thick layer of crumbs in the bottom of the pie plate. Line the sides of the plate with wafers broken into halves (round side out) with more crumbs between the wafers. Then turn in the fruit mixture. and place in the refrigerator to set. This will take about 4 hours. But there'll be no harm done if you want to make this pie the night before. And in case you'd like to use berries in place off oranges that'll be good, too. Just substitute the same amount of berries and juice."
---"Refrigerator Cakes and Pies Eliminate Baking Drudgery," Ann Barrett, Washington Post, August 1, 1933 (p. 9)

"Cheers! Also a couple of tigers! For we just peered into the refrigerator and mother is baking a pie! No fooling. It's a real refrigerator. Also, it's a real pie. it went in soft and soupy. it's coming out trenblinly firm, enticingly fluffy--the most palate teasing morsel yet to call itself pie. And the answer--the newly arrived family of refrigerator pastries that is setting the town buzzing and taking the floor even from the aborbing matter if jigsaws. The delicate backbone--if one day apply such a sturdy name to such a quivering creating--is gelatin. But the result is like no gelatin dessert yet on the books...Chiffons and cream pies start out the list, but lemon chiffon has now taken to itself relatives. Coffee chiffon, and chiffons glorified with crushed pineapple or fresh spring strawberries shiver with glee as they are turned tino crisp, baked shells and slid refrigeratorwars to be "cold-baked" to a cut-able firmness. For refrigerator pies (except for the pre-baked crust) never see the oven. Some of the ingredients do, however, get acquainted with the top of the stove. And of the coffee chiffon, served up with hot chocolate, demi-tasse, or even a cup of tea, as a light, relieving touch after a robust meal, is, to me, the perfect selection...gelatin isn't the only way we have of putting stanupableness into the new era of refrigerator pastries. Another pie--or it may be turned into a whole family of tarts--stands up because sone one discovered that lemon juice thickens condensed milk..."
---"Refrigerator Now the Place to Bake Pies," Mary Meade, Chicago Daily Tribune, April 16, 1933 (p. D1)
[NOTE: Includes recipes for Coffiee Chiffon Pie, Chicolate Chiffon, Refrigerator Walnut Pie and Strawberry Chiffon Tarts.]

[1936]
"Hawaiian Refregerator Pie
Crust
20 graham crackers, rolled fine
4 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons melted butter
Filling
1 package lemon flavored gelatin
1 3/4 cups boiling water
1 cup canned crushed pineapple and juice
1 1/2 cups cream, whipped stiff
8 graham crackers, rolled fine
1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar
Combine the ingredients of the crust, blending well. Pat the mixture firmly over the inside, bottom, and sides of a ten inch pie pan. Chill this while you make the filling. For the filling, dissolve the gelatin mixture in the boiling water, then add the pineapple, which--if fresh--must be scalded. Chill this combination and just as it starts to thicken add the whipped cream, graham cracker crumbs, and the sugar. Our the mixture into the cracker shell until set."
---"Tribune Recipes," Chicago Daily Tribune, September 11, 1936 (p. 22)

[1939]
""Give us more refrigerator cakes and pies" some of my readers have begged. So today I am persenting one of those fluffy-as-a-cloud chiffon pies which looks ok, so hard to make, but actually requires no cooking at all! You will win instant fame as a cook when you sevre this one, and you can take the bows with a chuckle up your sleeve knowing it is easier that "pie." Refrigerator pies can be made in a pastry shell, which, of course, is baked before the filling it put in. This pie today, is made in a crumb shell, which is much easier. Crumb shells can be made of dry, crisp cereals, vanilla wafers, graham crackers or dry cake crumbs. Simply roll the cereal, crackers or crumbs fine, and to 1 cup of crumbs add 1-3 cup softened butter and 1-4 cup sugar. Press firmly on sides and bottom of buttered pie plate and chill. Filling:

Fruit Chiffon Pie.
1 tablespoon gelatin
1-4 cup cold water
1 1-2 cups diced fruit
3-4 cup fruit juice
1-2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1-8 teaspoon salt
1-2 cup whipping cream
Sprinkle gelatin over cold water and allow to soften. Combine fruit, juice and sugar, cook about 5 minutes. Stir in gelatin, lemon juice and salt. Chill. When mixture begins to thicken, fold in cream which has been whipped stiff. Pour into pie shell, and chill until well set.
Note: Fresh uncooked pineapple will not congeal in gelatin mixture. There are lots of things you can do with fresh pineapple, but for molded desserts and salads you will have to use cooked or canned pineapple. Almost daily some imaginatie and enterprising woman phones to ask why her gelatin will not congeal, after hs she has put fresh pineapple in it. It just won't."
---Refrigerator Pies Are Easy; Chiffon Variety Recipe Given," Sally Saver, Atlanta Constitution, June 27, 1939 (p. 14)

---

Sawdust pie

The oldest reference we find for Sawdust pie is a recipe published in Bon Appetit, May 1983 ("Letters to the Editor, p. 8). The letter submitted by Kathly Higley, St. Louis Missouri, who references she ate this at Patti's, a family-owned restaurant in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. Our survey of historic newspaper & magazine articles suggest desserts named "Sawdust Pie" (a super sugary concoction featuring pecans, coconut & egg white meringue) bubble up in the deep south/Texas in late 1990s. We find no person/restaurant/cooking contest/company claiming *invention* of this particular item. Neither did we find recipes with this name in our old cookbooks. The closest related item (ingredients/region) we find is Japanese fruitcake. Perhaps Sawdust Pie is a twist on this particular Southern/Appalachian Regional theme?

COMPARE THESE RECIPES

"Sawdust Pie.
8 to 10 Servings
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups flaked coconut (6 ounces)
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (6 ounces)
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
7 egg whites, unbeaten
1 unbaked 10-inch pie shell
Unsweetened whipped cream (garnish)
1 large banana, thinly sliced (garnish)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine sugar, coconut, pecans, graham cracker crumbs and whites in large bowl and mix well; do not beat. Turn into pie shell. Bake until filling is just set, about 35 minutes; do not overbake. Serve warm or at room temperature. Top each serving with generous dollop of whipped cream and several banana slices."---Bon Appetit, May 1983 (p. 8)

"Japanese Coconut Pie.
This is no more Japanese than the fruitcake of that name, but is simply the cake's coconut filling turned into a custard pie. It is very rich; serve in small slices with strawberries or raspberries and Soured Cream.

1 recipe for Coconut Filling
3 eggs
1 partially baked 9-inch pie shell
Beat the eggs into the coconut filling. Pour into the partially baked pie shell and bake in an oven preheated to 325 degrees F. for about 40 minutes, until the top is slightly brown but not puffed up."
---Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, Bill Neal [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1990 (p. 270)

"Coconut Filling (for Japanese Fruitcake)
1 medium coconut
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 Tb. cornstarch
Pinch of salt
2 lemons, grated zest and juice
Whipped cream or Fluffy Icing
...For the filling, drain the juice from the coconut and reserve. Crack the coconut, discard the outer shell, and pare away the brown skin. Grate the meat and add to a saucepan with 1 1/2 cups sugar. Measure the liquid from the coconut. If necessary, add water to make up 3/4 cup liquid and stir into the saucepan with 1 1/2 \ cups sugar. Measure liquid and stir into the saucepan. Bring to boil and cook about 5 minutes. Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons of coconut liquid if you have it, or water. Add some of the hot liquid to the cornstarch to cook at the simmer 3 or 4 minutes. Season up with a few grains of salt and lemon zest and juice. Set aside to cool, stirring constantly."
---ibid (p. 295)

---

Shepherd's pie

The English tradition of meat pies dates back to the Middle ages. Game pie, pot pie and mutton pie were popular and served in pastry "coffyns." These pies were cooked for hours in a slow oven, and topped with rich aspic jelly and other sweet spices. The eating of "hote [meat] pies" is mentioned in Piers Plowman, and English poem written in the 14th Century. (Cooking of the British Isles, Adrian Bailey, pages 156-7) The Elizabethans favored minced pies. "A typical Elizabethan recipe ran: Shred your meat (mutton or beef) and suet together fine. Season it with cloves, mace, pepper and some saffron, great raisins and prunes..." (Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson, page 273). About mince and mincemeat pies.

The key to dating Shepherd's pie is the introduction (and acceptance) of potatoes in England. Potatoes are a new world food. They were first introduced to Europe in 1520 by the Spanish. Potatoes did not appeal to the British palate until the 18th Century. (Foods America Gave the World, A. Hyatt Verrill, page 28). Shepherd's Pie, a dish of minced meat (usually lamb, when made with beef it is called "Cottage Pie") topped with mashed potatoes was probably invented sometime in the 18th Century by frugal peasant housewives looking for creative ways to serve leftover meat to their families. It is generally agreed that it originated in the north of England and Scotland where there are large numbers of sheep--hence the name. The actual phrase "Shepherd's Pie" dates back to the 1870s, when mincing machines made the shredding of meat easy and popular." (The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, page 717).

Where does "Cottage Pie" fit in?

"In present day English, cottage pie is an increasingly popular sysnonym for shepherd's pie, a dish of minced meat with a topping of mashed potato. Its widening use is no doubt due in part to its pleasantly bucolic associations, in part to the virtual disappearance of mutton and lamb from such pies in favour of beef...But in fact, cottage pie is a much older term than shepherd's pie, which does not crop up until the 1870s; on 29 August 1791 we find that enthusiastic recorder of all his meals, the Reverend James Woodford, noting in his diary Dinner to day, Cottage-Pye and rost Beef' (it is not clear precisely what he meant by cottage pie, however)."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 92)

"The term cottage pie, often confused with shepherd's pie but probably denoting a similar dish made with minced beef, has a somewhat longer history and is similarly effective in evoking a rural and traditional context."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 717)

SURVEY OF HISTORIC RECIPES
Mutton and beef pies are found in Medieval British texts. Minced meat pies were favored during the Tudor years. Minced mutton and potato recipes begin showing up in the 18th century. These dishes are listed by various names. The oldest recipe we have for something called "Shepherd's Pie" is dated 1886:

[1596]
"For to Make Mutton Pies
Mince your mutton and your white together. When it is minced season it with pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, prunes, currants, dates and raisins, and hard eggs, boiled and chopped very small, and throw them on top."
---The Good Housewife's Jewel, Thomas Dawson, 1595 edition With an introduction by Maggie Black [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1996 (p. 68)

[1685]
"To make minced Pies of Mutton
Take to a leg of mutton four pound of beef-suet, bone the leg and cut it raw into small pieces, as also the suet, mince them together very fine, and being minc't season it with two pound of currans, two pound of raisins, two pound of prunes, an ounce of caraway seed, an ounce of nutmegs, an ounce of pepper, an ounce of cloves, and mace, and six ounces of salt; stir up all together, fill the pies, and bake them as the former."
---The Accomplisth Cook, Robert May, facsimile 1685 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 1994 (p. 232)

[1747]
"To Make a very fine Sweet lamb or Veal Pye.
Season your Lamb with Salt, Pepper, Cloves, Mace and Nutmeg, all beat fine, to your Palate. Cut your Lamb, or Veal, into little Pieces, make a good Puff-paste Crust, lay it into your Dish, then lay in your Meat, strew on it some stoned Raisins and Currans clean washed, and some Sugar; then lay on it some Forced-meat Balls made sweet, and in the Summer some Artichoke-bottoms boiled, and scalded Grapes in the Winter. Boil Spanish Potatoes cut in Pieces, candied Citron, candied Orange, and Lemon-peel, and three or four large Blades of Mace; put Butter on the Top, close up your Pye, and bake it. Have ready against it comes out of the Oven a Caudle [thick drink] made thus: Take a Pint of White Wine, and mix in the Yolks of three Eggs, stir it well together over the Fire, one way, all the time till it is thick; then take it off, stir in Sugar enough to sweeten it, and squeeze in the Juice of a Lemon; pour it hot into your Pye, and close it up again.Send it hot to table."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse [London:1747]Chapter VIII, "Of Pies."

[1849]
"A Casserole of Mutton
Butter a deep dish or mould, and line it with potatoes mashed with milk or butter, and seasoned with pepper and salt. Fill it with slices of the lean cold mutton, or lamb, seasoned also. Cover the whole with more mashed potatoes. Put it into an oven, and bake it till the meat is thoroughly warmed, and the potatoes brown. The carefully turn it out on a large dish; or you may, if more convenient, send it to table in the dish it was baked in."
---Directions for Cookery in Its Various Branches, Miss Leslie [Philadelphia:1849] (p. 111)

[1861] Baked Minced Mutton (recipe 703) & Baked Beef (recipes 598 & 599)
---Mrs. Beeton's Book of Houeshold Management, Isabella Beeton [London]
[NOTE: Mrs. Beeton's minced meat pies are served hot or cold.]

[1886]
"Shepherd's pie
1 pound of cold mutton
1 pint of cold boiled potatoes
1 tablespoon of butter
1/2 cup of stock or water
Salt and pepper to taste
The crust
4 good-sized potatoes
1/4 cup cream
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut the mutton and boiled potatoes into pieces about one inch square; put them in a deep pie or baking dish, add the stock or water, salt, pepper, and half the butter cut into small bits. The make the crust as follows: Pare and boil the potatoes, then mash them, add the cream, the remainder of the butter, salt and pepper, beat until light. Now add flour enough to make a soft dough--about one cupful. Roll it out into a sheet, make a hole in the centre of the crust, to allow the escape of steam. Bake in a moderate oven one hour, serve in the same dish."
---Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book, Mrs. S[arah] T[yson] Rorer [Philadephia: 1886] (p. 117)

[1894]
"Cottage Pie
Required: a pound and a half of cooked potatoes, half a pound to three-quarters of cold meat, seasoning and gravy as below. Cost, about 9d. The potatoes must be nicely cooked and mashed while hot...The should be seasoned, and beaten until light with a wooden spoon. A pie dish should then be greased, and the potatoes put at the bottom, to form a layer from half to an inch in thickness. The meat should be made into a thick mince of the usual kind with stock or gravy...or it may be mixed with Onion Sauce, or any other which may be sent to table with meat. The nicer the mince, the nice, of course, will be the pie. The meat doest next, and should be put in the centre of the bottom payer, leaving a lieetl space all afround. The crop the remainder of the potatoes on the top, beginning at the sides--this prevents the boiling out of the gravy when the meat begins to cook--go on until all the used, making the pie highest in the middle. Take a fork, and rough the surface all over, because it will brwon better than if left smooth. For a plain dish, bake it for fifteen to twenty minutes. Or it may be just sprinkled with melted dripping (a brush is used for this), or it may be coated with beaten egg, part of which may then be used in the mashed potatoes. As soon as the pie is hot through and brown, it should be served. There are many recipes for this pie, or variation of it, and in some, directions are given for ptuting the meat in the dish first, and all the potatoes on the top. The plan above detailed will be found the better, because the meat being enveloped entirely in potatoes runs no risk of becoming hard, as it wold do it exposed to the direct heat of the oven. Any other cooke vegetables may be added to the above, but they should be placed between the meat and potatoes, both top and bottom. If a very savoury pie is desired, make the mince very moist, and allow longer time for baking. The potatoes will absorb some of the gravy, and found tasty. In this case, the heat must not be fierce at starting, only at the end for the pie to brown well. For a richer pie, allow a larger proportion of meat. For a very cheap one, half a pound of meat will do for two pounds of potatoes."
---Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894 (p. 512-3)

"Tinned Meat, Shepherd's Pie
Required: two pounds of meat, half-a-pint of canned tomatoes, half-a-pound of fried onions, salt and black pepper, and any herbs preferred, four pounds of potatoes, and some gravy. Cost, 1s. 6d. To 1s. 8d. First grease a deep baking dish with some of the melted fat from the tin. Boil or steam the potaotes, mash and season them ...and put them in an inch thick at the bottom and sides of the dish. Then put the onions all over the potato layer. Mince the meat, add the jelly from it, and the tomatoes, with a little more stock or plain gravy of any sort; pile this in the centre of the dish; put the remainder of the potatoes thickly on the top; rough the surface with a fork, and bake until well browned in a moderate oven about three-quarters of anhour. The potatoes will absorb some of the gravy and be very savoury. The dish is an excellent one, considering its small cost. If liked, some pork can be added, and apple sauce used instead of the tomatoes. Tinned ox-tails, ox cheek, kidney, &c., may take the place of the beef or mutton. Either will provide a hot, cheap meal in a short time."
---ibid (p. 533)

Shoofly pie

Shoofly pie has such an interesting name, it must have an equally interesting history. It certainly does!

Many food history reference books attribute the origin of shoofly pie to the Pennslyvania Dutch. A closer examination of culinary evidence suggests this group may be able to claim the name, but maybe not the recipe. This resiliant sugar-based formula is capable of adapting through the ages according to ingredient availability and cook ingenuity. Food historians tell us sugar-filled pastries originated in the Ancient Middle East. Sweet treacle pies were popular all over Medieval Europe. Renaissance diners preferred similar compostions made with fine white sugar. These recipes were introduced to America by European settlers from several nations. Molasses was often substituted for treacle in colonial American recipes. Some folks say the "original shoofly recipe" is descended from Centennial cake. Both desserts have striking similarities.

WHY SHOOFLY? According to the book Rare Bits, Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes, by Patricia Bunning Stevens (p. 262) shoofly pie was created when "the pie-loving Pennsylvania Dutch ...found themselves short of baking supplies in the late winter and early spring...all that was left in the pantry were flour, lard, and molasses. From these sparse ingredients they fashioned Shoo-Fly Pie and found that their families liked it so well that they soon made it all year round. The unusual name is presumed to come from the fact that pools of sweet, sticky molasses sometimes formed on the surface of the pie while it was cooling, inevitably attracting flies." According to the The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, by John Mariani (p. 293) the term "Shoo Fly Pie" was not recorded in print until 1926.

"Shoofly pie.
In American cuisine, shoofly pie is a sort of treacle tart, made with molasses or brown sugar and topped with a sugar, flour, and butter crumble. It's name is generally taken to be an allusion to the fact that it is so attractive to flies that they have to be constantly shooed away from it, but the fact that it originated as a Pennsylvania-Dutch specialty suggests the possibility that shoofly is an alteration of an unidentified German word."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 310-1)

WHAT IS AMISH SHOOFLY?
There are two basic variations on the traditional Amish Shoofly Pie recipe."Traditional" Shoo-fly pies are made with either a "wet bottom" (soft filling and crumb topping) or "dry bottom" (crumb topping is mixed into the filling), which is commonly served for breakfast."

If you are looking for a Shoo-Fly pie recipe from the early 18th century, try this one from "The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook," by Mary Donovan. On page 135 appears this recipe attributed to Magdelena Hoch Keim of Lobachsville, Pennsylvania. (1730--?). This recipe has been modernized for contemporary kitchens:

Wet-Bottomed Shoofly Pie
3/4 cup Flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp each nutmeg, ginger, and ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
2 tablespoons shortening
1 egg yolk, beaten well
1/2 cup barrel molasses
3/4 cup boiling water
1/2 tsp baking soda
Piecrust dough for 9-inch pie

Combine flour, sugar, spices, and salt with the shortening. Work into crumbs with your hands. Add beaten egg yolk to molasses. Pour boiling water over soda until dissolved; then add to molasses mixture. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry and fill it with the molasses mixture. Top with the crumb mixture. Bake at 400 degrees until the crust browns, about 10 minutes. Reduce to 325 degrees and bake firm.

Original recipes for "molasses pie" read like this:

Four eggs--beat the Whites separate--one Teacupful of brown Sugar, half a Nutmeg, two Tablespoonfuls of Butter; beat them will together; stir in one Teacupful and a half of Molasses, and then add the Whites of Eggs. Bake on Pastry.
(Mrs. Cole's Recipes, c. 1837--reprinted in The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, Helen Bullock [Colonial Williamsburg:Williamsburg VA] 1937 (p. 127)

Related foods? Chess Pie (aka sugar pie) & Mongtomery Pie,

Sweet potato pie
Sweet potatoes are "New World" foods, pie is an "Old World" recipe. Creamy recipes combining orange vegetables with sweeteners, spice and cream were known in Medieval Europe. Carrots were sometimes employed in this manner in England. Sweet potatoes (like pumpkins) were introduced to Europe in the 16th century. Food historians tell us these new vegetables were greatly prized by some European kings and queens.

"King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella may have liked [sweet potatoes] well enough to have planted them in their court gardens. Their son-in-law, Henry VIII of England, liked them too, he thought the plant was an aphrodesiac...Rareness and expense, besides that quality Henry VIII appreciated, lent it chic. Also, "the most delicate root that may be eaten," as the sixteenth-century English mariner and slave trader John Hawkins called it, suited European taste. ..Henry ate his sweet potatoes in heavily spiced and sugared pies, a fashion that survived at least until the 1680s."
---The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World, Larry Zuckerman [North Point Press:New York] 1998 (p. 9)

Sweet potatoes were introduced to West Africa soon thereafter. They were similar to yams ("Old World" foods) and quickly incorporated into the local cuisine. Sweet potato pie seems to have converged in the American South from very early colonial days. It quickly became a staple of the region. Today this fine pie is considered by some to be a cornerstone of "Soul Food."

"Africans in the South knew the yam...from their homeland and the two tubers have become virtually interchangeable in Southern cooking. Most Southern sweet potato ricpes have been developed by black from their traditional cuisine..."
---Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, Bill Neal [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1996 (p. 268)

Why are sweet potatoes pies sometimes served with marshmallows? During the late 19th/early 20th century marshmallows were very trendy. Mass-manufactured, plentiful and inexpensive, they were incorporated into cakes, pies, gelatin desserts, hot chocolate, candies, and the like. Marshmallows were promoted as a moden whipped cream substitute. About marshmallows. The earliest recipes we find combining sweet potato dishes with marshmallows [in American cookbooks] were printed in the early 1930s. According to these books, marshmallows were placed on top of the finished pie for decoration. In reality? Printed recipes lag several years behind actual practice. It is a pretty safe assumption that marshmallows (or their culinary precursor, sweet cream) were added to holiday sweet potato dishes much earlier.

A SURVEY OF SWEET POTATO PIE RECIPES THROUGH TIME
The earliest references we find to potato pie in English cookbooks were printed in the 18th Century. There bear striking resemblance in both ingredients and method to pompion (pumpkin) pies of the 17th century. About pumpkin pie. Early potato pie recipes are included with savory/vegetable dishes; 19th century recipes are grouped with desserts. Culinary evidence reveals a variety of different ways for making these pies. Did the early cooks use "sweet potatotes" or were white potatoes that were sweetened? It's difficult to determine from the primary evidence.

[1747]
"Potato-Cakes.
Take the Potatoes boil them, peel them, beat them in a Mortar, mix them with Yolks of Eggs, a little Sack, Sugar, a little beaten Mace, a little Nutmeg, a little Cream, or melted Butter, work it up into a Paste, then make it into Cakes, or just what Shapes you please with Moulds, fry them brown in fresh Butter, lay them in Plates or Dishes, melt Butter with Sack and Sugar, and pour over them."

"A Pudding made thus. Mix it as before, make it to the Shape of a Pudding, and bake it; pour Butter, Sack and Sugar over it."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, facsimile reprint 1747 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 1995 (p. 98) [NOTES: Although the type of potatoes is not specified (white, sweet), the recipe is strikingly similar to that of modern-day sweet potato pie. Many 18th century English and American puddings were baked in pie crust. "Sack" is a type of sweet wine.]

[1753]
"A Potato Pye.
Having made your Crust, lay a Layer of Butter in the Bottom, and having boiled your Potatoes tender, lay them in, and upon them may Marrow, Yoks of hard Eggs, whole Spice, blanched Almonds, Dates, Pistachoes, Orange, lemon, and Citron -peel candy'd; then lay in a Layer of Butter over all, close up your Pye, bake it; and when it comes out of the Oven, cut up the Lid, and pour in melted Butter, Sutagr, Wine, and the Yolks of Eggs."
---The Lady's Companion, Sixth Edition, Volume II [J. Hodges:London] 1753 (p. 161)

[1792]
"Potatoe Pudding.
Take two pounds of potatoes, boil them, peel them, bruise them fine, and rub them through a sieve with the back of a wooden spoon, mix them with half a pound of fine sugar, a pound of fresh butter melted, a glass of sack or brandy, half a nutmeg grated, a little lemon peel shred fine, and beat up six eggs well and put in; mix all the ingredients well together, and put in half a pound of currants clean washed and picked; dip your cloth into boiling water, put in the pudding, tie it close, and boil it one hour; when it is done turn it into the dish, pour melted butter, sack and sugar mixed over it, and send it to table hot. You may leave out the currants if you please.

"Potatoe Pudding a second Way.
Boil two pounds of white potatoes, peel them, and bruise them find in a mortar, with half a pound of melted butter and the yolks of four eggs; to it into a cloth, and boil it half an hour; then turn it into the dish, pour melted butter, with a glass of sweet wine and the juice of a Seville orange mixed over it, and strew powder sugar over all.

"Yam pudding.
Take about two pounds of yam, pare it, boil it till it is tender, mash it, and rub it through a sieve; beat up the yolks of eight and the whites of four eggs, with a half pint to cream, half a pound of melted butter, and same quantitiy of sugar, a gill of sack, a small glass of brandy, a little grated nutmeg and ginger, a tea-spoonful of salt, a spoonful of orange flower or rose water, put in the yam, and mix all well together; either put it in a cloth, and boil it one hour, or lay a puff-paste round the edge of the dish, pour it in, and bake it three quarters of an hour. You may put in half a pound of currants well washed and picked."
---The New Art of Cookery According to the Present Practice, Richard Briggs [W. Spotswood, R. Campbell and B. Johnson:Philadelphia] 1792 (p. 328-330)

[1828]
"Sweet potato pudding.
A quarter of a pound of boiled sweet potato.
Three eggs.
A quarter of a pound of powerered white sugar.
A quarter of a pound of fresh butter.
A glass of mixed wine and brandy.
A half-glass of rose-water.
A tea-spoonful of mixed spice, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon.
Pound the spices, allowing a smaller proportion of mace than of nutmeg and cinnamon. Boil and peel some sweet potatoes, and when they are cold, weigh a quarter of a pound. Mash the sweet potato very smooth, and rub it through a siever. Stir the sugar and butter to a cream. Beat the eggs very light, and stir them into the butter and sugar, alternately with the sweet potato. Add by degrees the liquor, rose-water and spice. Stir all very hard together. Spread puff-paste on a soup-plate. Put in the mixture, and bake it about half an hour in a moderate oven. Grate sugar over it."
---Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, By a Lady of Philadephia (Eliza Leslie), facsimile reprint of 1828 edition, Boston:Munroe and Francis [Applewood Books:Chester CT] (p. 21)

[1839]
"Sweet potato pie.
Peel your potatoes, wash them clean, slice and stew them in a very little water till quite soft, and nearly dry; then mash them fine, season them with butter, sugar, cream, nutmeg and cinnamon, and when cold, add four beaten eggs, and press the pulp through a sieve. Roll out plain or standing paste as for other pies, put a sheet of it over a large buttered patty-pan, or deep plate, put in smoothly a thick layer of the potato pulp, and bake it in a moderate oven. Grate loaf sugar over it when done, and send it to table warm or cold, with cream sauce or boiled custard."
---Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, facsimile reprint 1839 edition [Image Graphics:Paducah KY] (p. 268)

[1878]
"Sweet Potato Pudding. 1/2 cup of butter.
3/4 cup cup of white sugar.
1 tablespoonful of cinnamon.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.
1 lemon, jucie and grated rind.
1 glass brandy.
Let the potatoes get entirely cold, and grate them. Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, spice and lemon. Beat the potato in by degrees, to a light paste; then the brandy, lastly the whites. Bake in a buttered dish, and eat cold."
---The Dinner Year-Book, Marion Harland [Charles Scribner's Sons:New York] 1878 (p. 164)

[1884]
"Sweet potatoes may be baked or boiled, The are better baked. Cold sweet potatoes may be cut in slices, warmed in milk, and seasoned with butter and salt, or browned in butter. A Southern Dish...Cut cold baked sweet potatoes into quarter-inch slices, and put them in an earthen dish. Spread each layer with butter, and prinkle slightly with sugar, and bake until hot and slighlty browned. Sweet potatoes are much richer when twice cooked."
---Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln, facsimile 1884 edition [Dover Publications:Mineola NY] 1996 (p. 296)

[1897]
"Sweet potato pie. Boil the potatoes and peel them, rub throguh a colandar, and to every pint of potatoes take a cupful of rich milk or cream, four eggs beaten separately. Cream a cup of butter and one of sugar together, add the yolks to the sugar and butter and beat well, then stir in the poatoes and beat again. Season with grated nutmeg and a wineglass of brandy. Then gently stir in the beaten whites of the eggs. Line deep pie plates with puff pastry and fill with this mixture; put into the range and bake. This must have no top crust."
---Warm Springs Receipt Book, E.T. Glover [B.F. Johnson Publishing Co.:Richmond VA] 1897 (p. 248)

[1911]
"Sweet Potato Pie.
1 cup mashed sweet potato
1/2 cup sugar
yolks of 2 eggs
2 cups rich milk
salt
Mix all with beaten yolks of eggs, bake slowly, flavor meringue of whites of eggs with vanilla."
---The Laurel Health Cookery, Evora Bucknum Perkins [Laurel Publishing Company:Melrose MA] 1911 (p. 365)

[1930]
"Sweet Potato Custard
Boil, peel, and mash through a sieve sweet potatoes, adding a little milk or water to make them press through easily. Take
1 quart of this sweet potato
1 quart sweet milk
1 pint granulated sugar
8 eggs, yolks only, well beaten
an mix well together. Flavor with essence of lemon or lemon rind, and a good pinch of powdered mace. Add a pinch of salt. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add one-third to the batter. Bake in pans lined with rich pastry. The custard could not be more than three-fourths of an inch deep. When done, cover with meringue made of the remaining whites well beaten with five tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar, and flavored with vanilla. Set in a warm oven until the meringue is set and colored a good cream color. Eat when quite cold."
---Old Southern Receipt, Mary D. Pretlow [Robert M. McBride:New York] 1930 (p. 139)

[1936]
George Washington Carver's sweet potato recipes (pie is no. 16)

ABOUT YAMS AND SWEET POTATOES
Although both yams and sweet potatoes edible starchy tubers, they evolved from two totally different plant species. True yams are Old World (there is one varietal exception) and sweet potatoes are New World (Peru). The confusion between these two is said to be attributed to linguistics. When Europeans introduced the sweet potato to Africa, (already familiar with yams), native cooks gave this similar-looking vegetable the same name.

"The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) and the yams (genus Dioscorea) are root crops that today nurture millions of people within the world's tropics. Morevever, they are plants whose origin and dispersals may help in an understanding of how humans manipulated and changed specific types of plants to bring them under cultivation. Finally, these cultivars are important as case studies the diffusion of plant species as they moved around the world through contacts between different human populations..."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University:Cambrdige] 2000, Volume One(p. 207)
[NOTE: This source contains several pages describing the origin, history and dispersal of both foods and an extensive bibliography for further study.]

WHY THE CONFUSION BETWEEN YAMS & SWEET POTATOES?

"It was probably slave traders who introduced the sweet potato to Africa, where it was called igname or nyam, which simply means yam'."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 775)

"The confusion with the true yam came from the habit of slaves calling the American sweet potato by an African word (either Gullah njam, Senegal, nyami, or Vai, djambi) meaning "to eat." The word was first recorded in America in 1676."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 318)

"The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas, not remotely related to either the white potato or true yam) is native to tropical America and is mentioned in 1494 as growing in Hispaniola by Chanca, physician to the fleet of Columbus, according to Sturtevant. The confusion started with potato, from Haitian batata (OED), came to be applied no only to sweet potatoes but also to papas, an Inca name for white potato, thus endlessly entangling their identities in early chronicles. Gerard in his Herball (1597) correctly identified them: sweets, already well known in England, he called simply Potatoes, saying that they grew in "...Spaine, and other hot regions," and that the "comfort, nourish, and strenghthen the body, vehemntly procuring bodily lust." While potatoes he called Potatoes of Virginia, explaining that the natives there called them Pappus. Fine drawings back up his identifications. Sweet potatoes were imported from Spain. Already by 1586, Thomas Dawson had called for Potaton in a recipe To make a tart that is a courage to mne or woman,, referring to its putative aphrodisiac virtues. And they were sufficiently common for Shakespeare to have regaled his audiences with "Let the sky raine Potatoes" in The Merry Wives of Windsor with the same intent."
---The Virginia House-Wife, Mary Randoph, with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 284-5)
[NOTE: The above are Ms. Hess' commentaries.]

ABOUT YAMS
"Yams existed at least as far back as the beginning of the Jurassic era, when dinosaurs had not yet been succeeded by mammals and S. America and Asia were still joined. After the continents separated at the end of the Cretaceous era, the evolution of American yams proceeded separately, but they are still not much different from their Old World relatives. The differences between Asian and African yams, which were separated only in historic times by the drying up of the intervening land, Arabia, are also slight...Even within the main cultivated species, yams vary to a remarkable extent in size, shape, and colour...The origin of the word yam'...story goes the Portuguese slave traders, watching Africans digging up some roots, asked what they were called. Failing to understand the question aright, the Africans replied that is was something to eat', "nyami" in Guinea. This became "inhame" in Portuguese and then "igname" in French and "yam" in English."
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 856)

African yams enjoy a rich and interesting history, figuring prominently in cultural traditions. "Dioscorea cayenesi" is the principal species grown in West Africa. The African name for this vegetable is "allato."

"While much emphasis had been placed on cereal cultivation, there is increasing evidence that tubers also played an important role in African diets as well and seem to date back to 18,000 to 17,000 years ago. Yams became so important within the western section of the continent that they took on mythical proportions. Festivities mark their planting and harvesting in countries like Ghana and Nigeria...It is generally agreed upon by botanists that certain species of yams were first protected and later domesticated in the tropical rainforest zone of western Africa..."
---The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent, Jessica B. Harris [Simon & Schuster:New York] 1998 (p. 6)

"The Yam Spirit was a powerful force present in much of Oceania and in Nigeria as well. Yam planting in Nigeria, as in the Oceanian lands, was accompanied by elaborate rituals. In Nigeria, the Yam Spirit, called Ifejilku by some, has a special cult...The yam ceremonies performed in these cultures are similar to agricultural rites surrounding numerous other crops throughout the world..."
---Nectar and Ambrosia: an encyclopedia of food in world mythology, Tamra Andrews [ABC-CLIO:Santa Barbara] 2000 (p. 250)

If all you need is a basic overview of the history of African yams, ask your librarian to help you find this article: "West African Prehistory," S. K. McIntosh, American Scientist 69 (6): 160 1981

ABOUT SWEET POTATOES
"Sweet potato...the most important of the tropical root crops, is the starch tuber of a vine of the concolcus and morning glory family. It is not related to the ordinary potato, although both plants are of American origin. The sweet potato is the cultivated descendant of a wild plant, the remais of whose tubers have been found in a cave in Peru inhabited before 8000BC. It was taken into cultuvation during the last centuries BC, well before th etime of the Incas, and became a staple food all over tropical America as far north as Mexico and on the Caribbean islands. It is likely that it was during the 13thc century AD that the sweet potato was taken westward to Easter Island and Hawaii, and in the next century to New Zealand...The first European to taste sweet potatoes were members of Columbus' expedition to Haiti, in 1492...Early accounts give various local names, aji, camote, apichu, and others; but the name which stuck was the first known Haitian one, batata...Native American sweet potatoes in use at that time were not all sweet. Some were plainly starchy and others markedly fibrous...But the European explorers were interested only in the sweet kinds, and it is these which have been spread by European influence while the others have largely died out...The sweet potato was cultivated in the south of Spain from the early 16th century, and proved a popular novelty...On the North American mainland sweet potatoes had long been grown by the Indians in Louisiana, where de Soto found them in 1540, and as far north as Georgia. By 1648 the colonists in Virginia were cultivating them. The sweet potato was especially valued during the war against the British and the Civil War, for it grows quickly and its underground habit makes it less vulnerable than surface crops to deliberate destruction."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 774-5)

"Sweet potato...A vine native to the New World tropics...They are an important crop of the American South...The earliest records fo the cultivation of the sweet potato, dated to around 750 B.C., come from Peru, but it was grown throughout South and Central America by the time Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World...The Taino word batata was soon transformed into several European words, including the Spanish patata, French patate, and English "potato." These words first meant specifically the sweet potato, not the white potato that as introduced much later to the North American colonies...The sweet potato, meanwhile, had already been shipped back to the Old World, perhaps as early as 1493 in Columbus's ship, and was cultivated in Spain by the middle of the sixteenth century. England got its first taste of the tuber in 1564, when Sir John Hawkins brought it back from "the Indies of Nova Hispania,"...the term "sweet potato" was not in use in America until the 1740s, but then distinguished from the white potato that had come to Boston about 1719 with Irish immigrants...In the nineteenth century George Washington Carver devised more than a hundred uses for the sweet potato...By the 1800s American were enjoying candied sweet potatoes, along with less lavish preparations of boiled, roasted, or mashed tubers. Today some of the most popular market varieties include "Centennial," Goldrush," "Georgia Red,"...The sweet potato has long been associated with southern and soul cooking..."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 318-9)

"In America, sweet potatoes were grown extensively in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, but there were a luxury in the North before 1830."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 520)

Sweet potatoes in Europe

Related food? Pumpkin pie!

Tarts
Food historians tell us tarts were introduced in Medieval times. Like pies, they could be savoury or sweet. Generally, the difference between a tart and a pie is the former does not contain a top crust. This made tarts a popular choice for cooks who wanted to present colorful dishes.

"The term 'tart' occurs in the 14th century recipe compilation the Forme of Cury [a cook book], and so does its diminutive 'tartlet'. The relevant recipes are for savour items containing meat. A mixture of savour and sweet was common in medieval dishes and typical of the elaborate, decorative tarts and pies which were served at banquets. There was, however, a perceptible trend towards sweet tarts. These usually contained egg custard and fruits of various kinds, which could be used to provide the brillant colours of which medieval cooks were fond: red, white, and pale green from fruits; strong green from spinach, which was used in sweet tarts; yellow from egg, with extra colour from saffron; and black from dark-coloured dried fruits. There are many 16th century recipes for coloured tartstuffs'."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 785)

"Tart...In America, the word tart tends to indicate a small individual open pastry case with a sweet, usually fruit filling. In Britian, this usage survives in the particular context of jam tarts, but on the whole tart refers to a larger version of this, with jam, fruit, or custard filling, that is cut into slices for serving, or to a similar fruit-filled pastry case with a crust--in other words, a fruit pie."
---An A to Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 338)

Medieval European tarts (savory & sweet)

• Custard tarts
• Darioles
• Spinach tart
• Tart of strawberries
• Tart on Ember Day (cheese & onions)
• Tartlettes (meat)

Elizabethen England's fruit tarts Apple & orange tart Apple and orange tarts are an excellent choice for a Shakespearean feast. The recipe, however is much older. Pie was made by ancient cooks. Apples were introduced to England by the Roman conquerors. They were commonplace by the 16th century. Oranges came later, in Medieval times. These were expensive items in Shakespeare's age because they were imported. Therefore, only the wealthy could afford apple and orange tarts. Recipes for apple and orange tarts appear in 16th century English cookbooks. Coincidentally? These cookbooks were also written by and for the wealthy. Example? Pear tart

17th century French tarts
La Varenne's Cuisiner Francaise [1651] contains several savory and sweet tarts. Samples here:

[1651]
"Tourte of peares
Pare your peares, and cut them very thin. Seeth them with water and sugar; after they are well sod, put in a little of some very fresh butter, beat all together and put it in your sheet of paste very thin. Bind it, if you will, and bake it; when it is baked, besprinkle it with water of flowers, sugar it, and serve."
---The French Cook, Francois Pierre, La Varenne, Englished by I.D.G. 1653, Introduced by Philp and Mary Hyman [Southover Press:East Sussex] 2001 (p. 200)
[NOTE: This book also offers recipes for tourte/tarts of cream, apples, massepin (Marzipan), almonds, pumpkin, melon, spinach, pishachios, butter, frogs, crawfisnh, carp, liver, and new oysters.]

18th century English tarts
Savory (meat, vegetables) and sweet (fruit, cheese, custard, jam), dozens of recipes are offered to cooks in this period. Note: some have "lids" (top crusts); others do not.

[1747]
"To made different Sorts of tarts
If you bake in tin Patties, butter them, and you must put a little Crust all over, because of the taking them out: If in China, or Glass, no Crust but the top one. Lay fine Sugar at the Bottom, then your Plumbs, Cherries, or any other Sort of Fruit, and Sugar at Top; then put on your Lid, and bake tem in a slack Oven. Mince-pies must be baked in Tin patties; because of taking them out, and Puff-paste is best for them. All Sweet Tarts the beaten Crust if best; but as you fancy. You have the Receipt for the Crusts in this Chapter. Apple, Pear, Apricock, &c. Make thus: Apples and Pears, pare them, cut them in Quarters, and core them; cut the Quarters a-cross again, set them on in a Sauce-pan with just as much Water as will barely cover them, let them simmer on a slow Fire just till the Fruit is tender; put a good Piece of Lemon-peel in the Water with the Fruit, then have your Patties ready. Lay fine Sugar at Bottom, then your Fruit, and a little Sugar at Top; that you must put in at your Discretion. Pour over each Tart a Tea Spponful of Lemon-juice, and three Tea Spoonfuls of the Liquor they were boiled in; put on your Lid, and bake them in a slack Oven. Apricocks do the same Way; only don't use Lemon. As to Preserved Tarts, only lay in your preserved Fruit, and put a very thin Crust at Top, and let them be baked as little as possible; but if you would make them mice, have a large patty, the Size you would have your Tart. Make your Sugar-Crust, roll it as thick as a Halfpenny; then buter your Patties, and cover it; shape your Upper-crust on a hollow Tin of purpose, the Size of your Patty, and mark it with a Marking-iron for that purpose, in what Shape you please, to be hollow and open to see the Fruit through; then bake your Crust in a very slack Oven, not to discolour it, but to have it crisp. When the Crust is cold, very carefully take it out, and fill it with what Fruit you please, ay on the Lid, and it is done; therefore if the Tart is not eat, your Sweet-meat is not the sorse, and it looks genteel."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, facsimile 1747 reprint [Prospect Books:Devon] 1995 (p. 75)

[1753]
"To make Orange or Lemon Tarts.
Take six large lemons, and rub them very well with salt, and put them in water for two days, with a handful of salt in it; then change them into fresh water without salt every other day for a fortnight; then boil them for two to three hours till they are tender; then cut them in half quarters, and then cut them...as thin as you can; then take pippins pared, cored and quartered, and a pint of fair water, and let them boil till the pippins break; put the liquor to your orange or lemon, half the pippins well broken, and a pound of sugar; boil these together a quarter of an hour; then put it in a gallipot, and squeeze and orange in it if it be lemon, or a lemon if it is orange; two spoonfuls are enough for a tart; your pattipans must be small and shallow; put fine puff-paste, and very thin; a little while will bake it. Just as your tarts are going into the oven, whith a feather or brush do them over with melted butter, and then sift double refin'd sugar on them, and this is a pretty icing on them."
---The Compleat Housewife: Or, Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion, E Smith, facsimile reprint 15th edition 1753 [Literary Services and Production:London] 1968 (p. 153-4)

Colonial American fruit tarts
These were very similar to European fare. Sample recipes:

18th century
"[To Make] a Codling Tarte Eyther to Looke Clear or Greene
First coddle [the] apples in fair water, [then] take halfe the weight in sugar & make as much syrrop as will cover the bottom of your preserving pan, & the rest of the suger keep to throw on them as they 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 baking; or if you pleas, you may serve them up in a handsome dish, only garnished with suger & cinnamon. If you would have your apples looke green, coddle them in faire water, the pile them, & put them into the water againe, & cover them very close. Then lay them in your coffins of paste with lofe suger, & bake them not to hard. When you serve them up, put in with a tunnell to as many of them as you please, a little thick sweet cream."
---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats, Transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press:New York] 1995 (p. 95-6)
[NOTE: Ms. Hess adds "Tarte comes unchanged form Old French.A tart differed from a pie in that it was baked open, a distinction that did not always hold true, however. A more important difference lay in the choice of paste; in principle, a tart was made of thinly rolled fine rich paste that could not be raised, as coffins were.]

"Too make sring tarts
Take oringes, pare them not too thin. Lay them in watter 2 days shifing them often in a day, for 2 days and one night, Civell orenges so pyle them in a suger and Lay them in patty pans making the Crust of puff past, sprinkell suger on every Row, Laying not too much watter, but as they presarve them, for the syrup that is Left you may put it in the pyes and use Less suger--"
---Penn Family Recipes: Cooking Recipes of Willaim Penn's Wife, Gulielma, Edited by Evelyn Abraham Benson [George Schumway:York PA] 1966 (p. 130)
[NOTE "Civell" are oranges from Seville, Spain].

[1796]
"Apple Tarts.
Stew and strain the apples, add cinnamon, rose-water, wine and sugar to your taste, lay in paste, No. 3. Squeeze theron orange juice--bake gently."
---American Cookery, Amelia Simmons, facsimile reprint of the second edition printed in Albany, 1796, with an introduction by Karen Hess [Applewood Books:Bedford MA] 1996 (p. 28) [NOTE: This book also contains a recipe for Orange or Lemon Tart and Gooseberry Tart.]

About tarts & pies.

ABOUT APPLES IN ENGLAND
"The Romans introduced new economic plants. The had already developed several apple varieties, with fruits smaller than those of today but larger and sweeter than those borne by Britain's indigenous wild crabs...Their apple varieties included types for good keeping, and villa owers stored them spread out in rows in a dry, well-ventilated loft...Apples were sliced into two or three pieces with a redd or bone knife (since metal stained the fruit), and were put to lie in the sun."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 325-6)

ABOUT ORANGES IN ENGLAND
"The first Englishmen to enjoy oranges, lemons...were probably the crusaders who wintered with Richard Coeur-de-Lion in the fruit groves around Jaffa in 1191-2. About a hundred years later citrus fruits had begun to arrive in England itself. Fifteen lemons and seven oranges, together with two hundred and thirty pomegranates and some dried fruits were brougth from a Spanish ship at Portsmouth in 1289 for Queen Eleanor...The Southern fruits were very expensive at that time...The oranges that reached England in those days were always bitter, of the type of the Seville orange. From the end of fourteenth century the consignments became more frequent, coming in from Spain or Portugal, or on the Italian spice ships. Not only were citrus fruits themselves imported, but also confectionery made from them."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 332-3)

"The same ships that carried spices also tended to carry fruit, such as oranges, of which a surprising number were brought to England. These were frequently imported in the tens of thousands per ship, and occasionally as many as a hundred thousand (in March 1480). These oragnes were probably always a bitter variety. For customs purposes they were declared at about ten for 1d."
---Food and Feast in Medieval England, P.W. Hammond [Wren's Press:Gloucestershire] 1998 (p. 11)

"Besides the food associated with certain occasions there was luxury food which was served whenever it could be obtained and which was intended to delight and impress. One such food was fruit. A better-off person's meal in the sixteenth century finished with fruit...Henry VIII's meals also ended with fruit, although exactly what fruit is not specified apart from the fact that oranges and pippins (a variety of apples) are often included on the menu. Ordinary people could also enjoy the fruit they grew in their own gardens, but imported luxuries like oranges were far beyond their means."
---Food and Feast in Tudor England, Alison Sim [Sutton Publishing:Gloucestershire] 1997 (p. 11)

About pear tarts
Baked pears (in syrup/wine/spices) were recorded in Anient Roman texts. They were also quite popular in Medieval Europe. Sample recipe here.

Likewise? Tarts (generally pies-like recipes without top crusts) were known during these times. The earliest printed evidence we find for pear pie in an English cookbook is from 1615. Gervase Markham's English Huswife contains a recipe for "A warden pie." Wardens were a particular kind of pear. Robert May's Accomplisht Cook [1685] contains this recipe:

"To make a Warden or a Pear Tart quartered.
Take twenty good wardens, pare them, and cut them in a tart, and put to them two pound of refined sugar, twenty whole cloves, a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon broke into little bits, and three races of ginger pared and slic't thin; then close up the tart and bake it, it will ask five hours baking, then ice it with a quarter of a pound of double refined sugar, rose water, and butter."
---The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May, facsimile reprint of 1685 edition [Prospect Books:Devon] 2000 (P. 244)

18th century cookbooks often contained recipes for puddings that would be classed today as tarts:

"An orange pudding.
Boil the rind of a Seville orange very soft, beat it in a marble mortar with the juice. Put ot it two Naples biscuits grated very fine, half a pound of butter, a quarter of a pound of sugar, and the yolks of six eggs. Mix them well together, lay a good puff paste round the edge of your china dish, bake in a gentle oven half an hour. You may make a lemon pudding the same way but putting in a lemon instead of the orange."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, facsimile 1769 edition with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 82)

COLONIAL AMERICAN TARTS

• Martha Washington's Apple Tart
• Tarts, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons [1796]
• Tarts, The Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter [1803]

About Tart Tatin
Arguably, the most famous of all French tarts! Happy accident or stroke of genius? You decide...

"Tarte Tatin, an upside-down French apple tart. The Larousse Gastronomique explains that the name commemorates the Tatin sisters, who popularized it in their restaurant at Lamotte-Beuvron, to the south of Orleans, in the early 20th century. Later in the century, chefs devised variations, using pear, pineapple, or rhubarb, to give but three examples."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 785)

"Tatin. The name given to a tart of caramelized apples that is cooked under a lid of pastry and then inverted to be served with the pastry underneath and the fruit on top. This delicious tart, in which the taste of caramel is combined with the flavour of apples cooked in butter under a golden crispy pastry crust, established the reputation of the Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel-restaurant in Lamotte-Beuvron at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the upside down' tart, amde of apples or pears, is an ancient specialty of Sologne and is found throughout Orleanais. Having been made famous by the Tatin sisters, it was first served in Paris at Maxim's, where it remains a specialty to the present day."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 1198)
[NOTE: The original Larousse Gastronomique (1938) contains information on apple tarts but does not make reference to Tarte Tatin.]

"...How these Tatin girls accidentally inventd the famous tart involves a small sally into French social history. The Solognes region is the paradise of French hunters, a wild, forested area along the upper reaches of the Loire River, near Joan of Arc's City of Orleans...The hunters come with dogs and guns to spread out along the forest roads that pass isolated villages where they stay in small hunting auberges. Most of these tiny inns are owned and run by women who are also superb game cooks... In one of the villages, Lamotte-Buevren, about 24 miles from Orleans, the Auberge Tatin has been owned by the Tatin family for almost 70 years. The most famous cooks in the family were the Tatin sisters Marie and Jeanne, who ran the auberge about 40 years ago. As well as their game specialties, they had a dessert that was quite popular with regular visitors. You might call it a kind of deep-dish one-crust fruit pie. They made it in a copper pan about 9 inches across and 3 inches deep. They neatly filled it with circles of fruit cut, covered it with a single pastry crust, put a lid and baked it by sliding it under the glowing wood embers in the huge hearth. When the crust was golden brown, they carried the pie in its pan to the table. One day, just as she stepped into the dining room, Marie Tatin dropped the pan. The pie stayed in the pan, but the crust cracked badly right across its center. In a flood of tears, Marie scooped up the pan from the floor and rushed it back to the kitchen. It obviously could not be served with the big crack. There was no time to bake another. What could be done? Jeanne had the brilliant idea that was to make them famous. Quickly she ran a knife around the edge of the crust and overturned the entire pie onto a serving platter with the cracked crust underneath. The fruit, now on top, looked very neat, but a bit pale. In a heavy iron skillet Jeanne quickly caramelized some butter and sugar, then dribbled the shiny golden syrup over the fruit. When Marie carried the newly invented upside-down tart into the dining room, it we recieved with acclamation. Within a few months, it was being copied all over the Sologne region. Within a few years, it was a favorite all over France. For the rest of their lives the Tatin sisters basked in the glory of their tart. Thousands of visitors came to their tiny auberge, not to hunt but just for the pleasure of meeting the sisters and looking at the circle painted on the floor to mark the spot where the tart fell. Yet the Tatin girls deeply resented all the imitation of their tart. They struggled for the rest of their lives to keep their recipe a secret. They never published it or even wrote it down, so an "authentic recipe" does not exist, only hundreds of different interpretations by other cooks."
---"One Great Dish," Roy Andres de Groot, Washington Post, October 14, 1979 (p. K1)

Coincidentally? Upside-down desserts were all the *rage* in the early years of the 20th century. Consider Pineapple Upside Down cake! Related foods? cheesecake & quiche.

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About these notes: Food history can be a complicated topic. These notes are not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject, but a summary of salient points supported with culinary evidence. If you need more information we suggest you start by asking your librarian to help you find the books and articles cited in these notes. Article databases are good for locating current recipes, consumer trends, and new products.
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Research conducted by Lynne Olver, editor The Food Timeline. About this site.

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11 November 2009