Daily TWiP - National Pie Day

Welcome to the Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays, historical observances, etc., we couldn't cram into The Week in Preview.

Nothing chases away the winter blahs quite like a warm piece of apple pie a la mode (or, if you prefer, with a slice of cheddar cheese melted on top). Today on National Pie Day, we celebrate not only the art of making pies, but also the joy of eating them. Rejoice, o ye baking-challenged - you can purchase a freshly-made pie from your favorite bakery (or microwave one from your favorite section of your grocer's freezer) and still be in the full spirit of the holiday.

According to the American Pie Council Web site, pie has been around since ancient times and was first baked by Romans, who in turn may have learned from the Greeks. The first pie recipe on record is for a goat cheese and honey pie with a rye crust - sounds tasty, but probably not something you'd want to do a la mode.

You've heard the phrase "as American as apple pie," right? Pies were brought to America by the first English settlers, and they had a long way to go before they would be recognizable as the fruit-filled embodiment of freedom.

Early English pies were long and thin, with more crust than filling, and the crust was mostly there to hold the filling in place while it baked - the crust wasn't usually eaten. Pies were typically of the meat variety (fruit pies weren't made until the 1500s) and different types of fowl were frequently used. The entire bird would be placed in the pie and the legs would be allowed to hang over the edge of the pan so that they could be used as handles. The crust, in a macabre twist that may or may not have been evident to the people of that period, was called "coffyn."

It really gives you a new perspective on the nursery rhyme that begins "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." That must have been one big coffyn with an awful lot of handles.

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- Teresa Santoski


Source: nashuatelegraph.com