Pies

Fun Facts About Pies

• Pie is older than cake. The earliest pies date back to the Neolithic period around 9500 BC in ancient Egypt where a simple crust made from ground grains was used to hold honey.
• Pies dating back to 12th century England were predominately savory, featuring thick, mostly inedible crusts used to preserve meat for travelers. Fruit pies only became popular later in the 1500s.
• Early American pumpkin pies were made by hollowing out a pumpkin, filling it with milk, honey, and spices, then baking it. There was no crust due to a lack of wheat flour, butter and proper ovens.
• "As American as apple pie?" Not really: apple pies trace their roots back to 14th century England. They were brought over to the American colonies by European settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
• There is a Pie Hall of Fame event which honors exceptional pie makers. Since 1995, the annual National Pie Championships award blue ribbons for top-tier sweet and savory pies.
• The world's largest meat pie was baked in 1998 in the U.K. and measured 32 ft long, 7 ft 7 in wide, and 2 ft deep. It contained over 23,000 pounds of diced beef, ox kidney, beef stock, mushrooms, onions, Worcester sauce, and mustard.
• Desperation (or Make-Do) types of pies gained popularity during the Great Depression when fresh fruit, butter, and eggs were expensive and scarce. These pies included Vinegar Pie, made to approximate the tangy flavor of lemon pie, and Ritz Cracker Pie, spiced with cinnamon to mimic the texture and taste of apples.
• Pecan pie's rise to popularity is largely thanks to the marketing of Karo corn syrup in the early 1900s, specifically through a recipe printed on their cans in the 1920s and 1930s.