The New York herald., 1879-11-30
The Great Pie Question.

|
after eating lemon m6ringue pie has
furnished occasion for q multitude OF
irrational attacks upon pie at large as an
article of diet. But it was not any essen
tial component of the pie which caused
the catastrophe. The poison consisted OF
verdigris that careless baker suffered to
form in the bottom of the copper kettle he
used in heating the meringue. The ra-
tional subject for attack under these cir
cumstances is not pie at all, but copper
kettles and unclean cooking Pie properly
prepared and skilfully cooked is charac-
teristic American composition, very inter-
esting historically theologically ana
@sthetically, perfectly defensibe poiiti-
cally on democratic principles, and even
dietetically not utterly condemnable. But
before considering it in any OF these aspects
let us first analyze what pie is in American
practice.
The English definition of pie does not
hold good in this country. In Great Britain
and Ireland pie is either ''pasty" or
start, and is prepared in deep dish, from
which it is inseparable until it is eaten.
|
/ pot lid, and beneath it, if q pasty, lies
preparation of meat. and, if n tart, guam
| tity of cooked fruit or jam. Side strips of
| paste in the dish are not necessary and
bottom crust is rare. So thick is an Eng
lish pie that the story is entirely credible
that Sir Geoffrey Hudson, the celebrated
dwarf, was served up in one at
e,;y hp DuE of
| ingham to Prince Charles and the
| Princess Henrietta Maria at Burleigh.
Horace Walpole somewhere mentions this
event, and Sir Walter Scott makes Sir
Geoffrey himself narrate the details to
Julian Peveril in Newgate. The American
pie seldom exceeds an inch in thickness.
A bottom crust is more essential to it than
the crust on the surface, and there is almost
infinite variety in the filings of its inte-
rior. In the cases of pumpkin, squash,
custard, meringue and some other species
a top crust is dispensed with. Mince and
berry pies almost always have one, and so
do apple and peach pies usually. Thick
ness is the only invariable characteristic of
the dimensions of the English pie.
It's circumference varies greatly. But
the American pie is seldom less than
six inches or more than ten inches in
diameter. The standard for its superficial
area is that of an ordinary dinner plate.
| It's crust is made Of -four, water and salt,
mixed with shortening" which consists Of
fat, sometimes lard alone and sometimes a
compound of lard and butter, to which is
| generally added carbonate of soda or some
other powder that iberates carbonic acid.
A sheet of this being rolled out thin is
spread over the plate and cut to its size.
Then strip of it is laid around the margin.
The filling of the pie is poured or laid in
and covered with the top crust when one is
employed, and the whole is then baked
rapidly in very hot oven. After it is
removed from the oven if the baking has
been skifully performed the plate may be
detached and another substituted with
which to serve it on the table.
The American pie, thus constituted, is
only some two hundred and fifty years old.
It's first authentic appearance in history is
in connection with Puritan thanksgivings
on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. From
Plymouth Rock it has spread wherever the
Puritan civilization has extended, until
like Thanksgiving Day itself, it has become
national institution. Search the cabin of
the remotest from tiersman in the West whose
good wife traces her ancestry to the Puri-
tans and you surely will discover pie
upon the shelf Start from the Atlantic,
and all the way to California you will find
every railroad lunch counter decorated with
pies. Even the South, impervious till
lately to Yankee notions, has become
hospitable to this one. Pie was COM
mon in the chief Southern cities SO
long ago as the days when a censure was
proposed upon John Quincy Adams in the
House of Representatives and price was
set upon the head of Garrison. But it re-
mained for the war to introduce pie into
the country districts of the South and nat
uralize it there among the smoke of battle
fields and the shocks of contending armies
The suffers pie cart followed close behind
every regiment of Northern troops, and pie
| and the national flag made simultaneous
advances in suppressing the rebellion.
The English "pasty," on the contrary. is a
survival from a primitive and barbarous
state of civilization. 1t figured on tho pro-
fuse and wasteful boards of Anglo-Saxon
thames, and King Richard in "Ivanhoe"
detects Friar Tuck up to his elbows in one
when he rouses him out of his hut in the
forest. SO distinctively American is our pie
that the scurrilous Englishman who lately
scoffed at the Seventh regiment of our
National Guard concentrated his animosity
into the one word ''pie-eaters."
This is brief historical sketch of pie, and
it is also suggestive of the theological and
aesthetic relations of the subject. The New
England Puritans were unrolaxing Calvin
lists, and pie, psthetically considered, was
the expression of the utmost limit to which