95 Fun Facts About Pie

'Pie in the sky' first appeared in a 1911 union song that mocked whose empty promises to workers?

Preachers were the target: labour activist Joe Hill parodied a Salvation Army hymn, jeering that the hungry were promised a reward in heaven instead of a meal.

What did medieval cooks call the stiff, often inedible pastry case that held a pie's filling?

A coffin, then spelled 'coffyn', simply meant a box or basket: the thick crust worked as baking dish and storage case, and often had to be cracked open to reach the filling.

The expression 'to eat humble pie' comes from a pie made with what?

Chopped animal offal, chiefly a deer's innards, was called 'umbles', and umble pie was food for the lower orders; the 'h' crept in later, though 'humble' is an unrelated word.

Which spice colours the filling in a 14th-century English apple pie recipe, one of the earliest known?

Saffron tints the apples, figs, raisins and pears in that recipe, so the dish behind 'as American as apple pie' was written down in England some four centuries before the United States existed.

'For Mom and apple pie' was supposedly American soldiers' stock answer for why they fought in which war?

World War II is when the saying is said to have caught on, yet the dish is an import: an English recipe survives from the 14th century, sweetened with figs, raisins and pears but no sugar.

American Cookery (1796), the first cookbook by an American, gave custard-style recipes for which pie?

Pumpkin pie took its modern form in Amelia Simmons's 'pompkin' puddings baked in a crust; earlier English cooks had sliced and fried the pumpkin instead.

Key lime pie probably grew out of a 1931 lemon pie recipe written to promote which canned ingredient?

Condensed milk maker Borden printed a no-bake 'Magic Lemon Cream Pie' in a 1931 brochure; swap in Key limes and the acid juice still thickens the milk and yolks without an oven.

In 2006, Key lime pie was designated the official state pie of which state?

Florida made it official in 2006, four decades after a Keys lawmaker is said to have proposed a $100 fine for advertising Key lime pie made without Key limes.

Which state named pecan pie its official state pie in 2013?

Texas lawmakers argued that no dish 'says Texas more sweetly', pointing out that the pecan was already the state tree and is the only nut the state grows commercially.

Mince pies long ago lost their minced beef and tongue, but traditional mincemeat still contains which fat?

Suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, is the last trace of the meat: cheap West Indian sugar turned the pie sweet in the 18th century, and the beef and tongue slowly dropped out.

According to the PGI rules, a Cornish pasty must be crimped where?

Along the curved side, never over the top: since 2011 the same protected-name rules have also meant that a pasty sold as Cornish must be made in Cornwall.

Which Leicestershire town gives its name to Britain's most famous pork pie?

Melton Mowbray's name has been legally protected since 2008: after distant factories began selling look-alikes, only pies made around the town with uncured pork may carry it.

Purists say a shepherd's pie should contain which meat, as opposed to the beef in a cottage pie?

Shepherd's pie, named for the sheep-herder, uses lamb or mutton; 'cottage pie', first recorded in 1791, originally covered any minced meat and the two names were long interchangeable.

Pi Day was founded in 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw at which San Francisco institution?

Larry Shaw, an Exploratorium physicist, launched Pi Day in 1988 with staff marching around a circular space and eating fruit pies; the US House recognised the day in 2009.

Which liqueur flavours a grasshopper pie?

Grasshopper pie takes its name and green colour from crème de menthe, the mint liqueur in the grasshopper cocktail; the filling is usually folded with marshmallow or cream in a chocolate-cookie crust.

The pie-in-the-face gag was first seen on film in 1909's Mr. Flip, starring which comedian?

Ben Turpin took the first on-screen pie in Essanay's Mr. Flip (1909); Chaplin and Stan Laurel had already done the gag on stage in Fred Karno's troupe.

Which duo stars in the 1927 pie-fight short The Battle of the Century?

Laurel and Hardy used a reported 3,000 pies; Stan Laurel wanted to throw so many that there would never be room for another pie picture.

Which tech billionaire was famously pied in Belgium in 1998?

Bill Gates was ambushed with cream pies by Belgian prankster Noël Godin's crew, who said they had drunk Trappist beer for courage beforehand.

Which pie was invented at the Hungry Monk restaurant in East Sussex in the early 1970s?

Banoffee pie began as a rework of an American coffee toffee pie: the chef tried apple and mandarin before banana clicked, and the owner coined the name.

Which state made the whoopie pie its official state treat in 2011?

Maine's lawmakers first proposed it as state dessert, but that title went to wild blueberry pie, so the whoopie pie had to settle for being the official 'treat'.

Moon Pies are made in which Tennessee city?

Chattanooga Bakery says the Moon Pie was born in 1917, when a Kentucky coal miner asked its travelling salesman for a snack 'as big as the moon'.

Despite its name, Boston cream pie is really what kind of dessert?

A cake of sponge layers, custard and chocolate glaze, it kept the name 'pie' from the days when cakes and pies were baked in the same pans.

Shoofly pie, a Pennsylvania Dutch specialty, is made with which sweetener?

Molasses fills the pie and may have named it: one account points to Shoofly, a Philadelphia molasses brand named after a boxing circus mule, another to the flies the sweet filling drew.

Tourtière, a minced pork pie eaten at Christmas réveillon, comes from which Canadian province?

Quebec's tourtière travelled south with emigrants, who carried the Christmas Eve pie into New England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Which Cornish pie is baked with fish heads poking up through the crust?

Stargazy pie's pilchards seem to gaze at the stars; Mousehole eats it every 23 December in honour of Tom Bawcock, the fisherman said to have braved a storm to end a famine.

Adelaide's pie floater is a meat pie served sitting in a bowl of what?

Pea soup holds the upside-down pie, a late-night staple of Adelaide's street pie carts that probably descends from the pea-and-pie suppers of northern England.

How many blackbirds were baked in the pie in the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence?

Four and twenty blackbirds, though the first printed verse, from around 1744, had 'naughty boys' in the pie instead.

What new name did Dreyer's announce in 2020 for its Eskimo Pie ice cream bar?

Edy's Pie honours Dreyer's co-founder Joseph Edy; the company retired the century-old name after acknowledging that it used a derogatory term.

Buko pie, filled with tender young coconut, is a specialty of which country?

The Philippines is said to owe buko pie to the Pahud sisters of Los Baños, who set out to bake American-style apple pie and used young coconut because apples did not grow there.

Which Australian invention of 1949 seals a sandwich into a pie-like pocket over a fire?

The jaffle iron was patented by Bondi doctor Ernest Smithers, who also coined the name; it set off a jaffle craze that made the clamp a must-have in 1950s Australian kitchens.

Rather than dark treacle, which sweetener makes up most of a British treacle tart's filling?

Golden syrup is itself a light treacle, a pale by-product of sugar refining, which is how the tart keeps its name; breadcrumbs and lemon juice thicken and sharpen the filling.

A 1450 recipe for 'grete pyes' contained which of these among its odds and ends?

The 1450 'grete pyes' recipe called for herons and storks along with beef, capons, mallard, teal, rabbits, woodcocks, marrow, egg yolks, dates, raisins and prunes.

A Bakewell tart from Derbyshire layers jam beneath which filling?

Almond frangipane tops the jam in a Bakewell tart, heir to the older Bakewell pudding, which a popular story says began when an inn's cook spread the almond mix over the jam by mistake.

In which TV series does FBI agent Dale Cooper rave about cherry pie and 'damn fine' coffee?

Twin Peaks made cherry pie a recurring motif, and in the 2017 revival a craving for pie and coffee is almost the only trace of the old Cooper to survive.

Sugar cream pie is the unofficial state pie of which Midwestern state?

Indiana's Senate backed it in a 2009 resolution; made without eggs from pantry staples, it is also called a desperation pie, the kind baked when the fruit ran out.

Pâté chaud, a meat pie left by colonial rule, is a bakery staple of which country?

Vietnam kept the pie when its colonial rulers left: bakers fill the flaky shell with seasoned ground pork, and emigrants carried it abroad, where Little Saigon shops sell it too.

Which wartime nurse reworked the pie chart into 'rose diagrams' showing the causes of soldiers' deaths?

Florence Nightingale drew them for MPs and officials unlikely to read tables of figures; the pie chart itself dates from William Playfair's Statistical Breviary of 1801.

'The day the music died' in 'American Pie' is the plane crash that killed which star?

Buddy Holly died with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper; McLean, then a 13-year-old paperboy, learned of it when he cut open his bundle of morning papers.

Which singer's shortened 2000 cover of 'American Pie' topped the UK singles chart?

Madonna recorded it for her film The Next Best Thing after co-star Rupert Everett talked her into it, and he sings backing vocals on the track.

Which corn syrup brand's makers claimed pecan pie was a 1930s 'discovery' by a sales executive's wife?

Karo's claim is shaky: a pecan custard pie recipe ran in Harper's Bazaar back in 1886, decades before the brand's marketing made corn syrup the standard filling.

Pie Town, home of a September Pie Festival near the Continental Divide, is in which state?

New Mexico's Pie Town was documented in 1940 by photographer Russell Lee, whose colour pictures of its homesteaders are among his best-known work.

Which silent film star made his own pork pie hats by stiffening fedora brims with sugar water?

Buster Keaton's trick turned fedoras into flat pork pies; the style began as women's wear in the 1860s and had its menswear heyday in the Great Depression.

The tinned steak-and-kidney pie brand Fray Bentos takes its name from a port in which country?

Fray Bentos is a river port in Uruguay where Liebig's Extract of Meat Company opened a plant in the 1860s; the name meant corned beef long before tinned pies, whose UK range Baxters bought in 2011.

Weird Al's unreleased parody 'Chicken Pot Pie' reworks which Paul McCartney and Wings song?

'Chicken Pot Pie' parodies Wings' 'Live and Let Die' (1973); McCartney, a strict vegetarian, declined to approve a song about eating meat, so it was never released on an album.

Which English monarch is traditionally credited with receiving the first recorded cherry pie?

Elizabeth I is traditionally credited with the first recorded cherry pie; for centuries before her, most pies had been savoury, filled with meat or fish.

Which toy takes its name from a Connecticut pie company whose empty tins Yale students tossed for fun?

Frisbee is a respelling of Frisbie: Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter in 1957 after learning what college students were calling the flying discs.

Which Stanley Kubrick film was meant to end with a War Room pie fight that was cut before release?

Dr. Strangelove was shot with a cream-pie battle as its finale, and accounts still differ on why it went: Kubrick himself called the scene farce that clashed with the film's satire.

Which cracker brand spent decades promoting a recipe for mock apple pie, a dessert containing no apples at all?

Ritz pushed the recipe from the 1930s, but the trick is older: the British Royal Navy knew a cracker-based mock apple pie as early as 1812.

Which vegetable was baked into so many American desserts that 19th-century cookbooks nicknamed it 'pie plant'?

Rhubarb got the nickname from its sour stalks, the only part cooks use: the large leaves hold enough oxalic acid to be poisonous.

Which Beatrix Potter character's father was caught in a garden and put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor?

Peter Rabbit raids the very same garden anyway, in a tale that has sold more than 45 million copies.

Which fast-food chain added pies to its menu in 1968 and sold them deep-fried for over two decades?

McDonald's swapped its fried pies for baked ones in 1992, but only across most of its American market, so the fried version lived on elsewhere.

Apple pie is an American emblem, but the apple tree itself originated in which region of the world?

Central Asia still shelters the apple's wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, which grows in the mountains of southern Kazakhstan and its neighbours.

Which singer-songwriter wrote the music and lyrics for Waitress, the Broadway musical about a pie-baking diner server?

Sara Bareilles later stepped into the lead herself, playing pie chef Jenna when the show returned to Broadway in 2021.

National Pie Day, a separate event from the mathematicians' Pi Day, falls in which month?

January 23 was chosen for a personal reason: founder Charlie Papazian simply declared his own birthday to be National Pie Day in the mid-1970s.

Which actress won an Oscar as Minny, whose chocolate pie delivers revenge in the film The Help?

Octavia Spencer took Best Supporting Actress for the role, beating her own co-star Jessica Chastain, who was nominated in the same category for the same film.

In which Shakespeare tragedy does a Roman general serve an empress her own sons baked in a pie?

Titus Andronicus has its hero promise to play the cook, then reveal mid-feast that the empress Tamora has already been eating her sons.

In which TV series does Ned, a pie-maker who can revive the dead with a touch, run The Pie Hole?

Pushing Daisies gives the gift a cruel catch: if Ned touches a revived person a second time, they die for good.

In the musical Sweeney Todd, which shop owner bakes the demon barber's victims into her pies?

Mrs. Lovett began life in a Victorian penny dreadful, The String of Pearls, and Angela Lansbury originated the role in Sondheim's musical on Broadway in 1979.

In the nursery rhyme, what does Little Jack Horner pull out of his Christmas pie with his thumb?

A plum is his prize, and a story that spread in the 19th century ties the rhyme to Thomas Horner, steward to the last abbot of Glastonbury.

In the nursery rhyme, Simple Simon meets a pieman who is on his way to which place?

The fair is where the pieman is headed, and he is no pushover: he asks to see Simon's penny before any tasting, and Simon hasn't got one.

On an American dessert menu, which phrase means a slice of pie comes with ice cream on top?

À la mode literally means in the current fashion; an 1890s hotel in Cambridge, New York, and an 1880s restaurant in Duluth, Minnesota, both claim the pairing.

The fluffy topping of a lemon meringue pie is made by whipping sugar with which ingredient?

Egg whites stiffen into peaks because the beating unravels a protein called ovalbumin; a little lemon juice or cream of tartar helps them hold.

A cottage pie contains no pastry at all, so which topping is baked over its filling instead?

Mashed potato is the lid, and the name is old: Parson Woodforde recorded eating Cottage-Pye in his diary in August 1791.

Which kitchen term describes cooking an empty pie crust before the filling goes in?

Blind baking stops a wet filling from turning the base soggy; the empty shell is usually weighed down with ceramic beads, rice or dried peas so it keeps its shape.

What job does a hollow ceramic 'pie bird' do when it is placed in the middle of a pie?

Lets steam escape is the whole idea: plain funnels did the job in Victorian kitchens, the bird shapes came later, and some of them whistle.

Which word names a rustic, free-form pie whose pastry edge is simply folded part-way over the filling?

Galette also names something quite different in Brittany: a savoury pancake made with buckwheat flour.

Which leafy vegetable fills spanakopita, the flaky Greek pie usually made with feta cheese?

Spinach is in the name itself: spanakopita joins the Greek words for spinach and pie, and a version with cheese can be called spanakotiropita.

Coulibiac, the grand Russian pie championed by the chef Escoffier, is usually filled with sturgeon or which other fish?

Salmon shares the crust with rice or buckwheat, mushrooms, onions and dill, and the grandest versions add vesiga, the spinal marrow of the sturgeon.

The pasty, carried abroad by migrating Cornish miners, became a cultural symbol of which US state's copper-mining north?

Michigan's Upper Peninsula took to it across communities: Finnish immigrants in the copper mines mistook the pasty for a pastry from home.

Which English town stages the World Pie Eating Championship, an annual contest first held in 1992?

Wigan's contest swapped quantity for speed in 2006: to meet healthy-eating guidelines, entrants now race to finish a single pie.

In London's traditional pie and mash shops, what name is given to the green parsley sauce poured over the plate?

Liquor here keeps the old sense of a cooking liquid: the sauce was traditionally made with the water left from stewing eels, though many shops now use chicken stock.

The village of Denby Dale began its tradition of giant pies in 1788 to celebrate which king's recovery from illness?

George III had recovered from a bout of mental illness; a later pie, baked in 1887 for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, spoiled and had to be buried in quicklime.

Derby pie, a chocolate and walnut custard pie, was created in which state?

Kentucky's Melrose Inn in Prospect created it in 1954, and the Kern family's company has held the name as a registered trademark since 1968.

Which state's 1999 apple pie law asks servers to make a good-faith effort to add cold milk or cheddar cheese?

Vermont's act even sets the portion: the cheddar slice must weigh at least half an ounce, and the same law named the apple the state fruit.

Morton, the self-styled Pumpkin Capital of the World and home of a Libby's pie-pumpkin cannery, is in which state?

Illinois is home to Morton, which claims that 99 percent of the world's canned pumpkin is produced there and throws a four-day festival every September.

In Sarah Weeks's novel Pie, to whom does Aunt Polly leave the secret of her famous piecrust in her will?

Her cat, a fat and disagreeable creature named Lardo, gets the secret, and Lardo in turn is left to ten-year-old Alice, which sets the whole town scheming.

Aunt Polly, the Pie Queen of Sarah Weeks's novel Pie, repeatedly wins a coveted prize named after which fruit?

Blueberry is the prize's name, and Polly's wins bring fame to the whole town, which is why her death leaves Ipswitch anxious about its future.

In Sarah Weeks's novel Pie, what does Aunt Polly do with her shop's pies that confounds her neighbours?

Gives them away is right: Polly bakes simply because it makes her happy, and the 1955-set story includes fourteen recipes, each placed before a chapter.

Sarah Weeks, author of the novel Pie, is best known for which earlier book about a girl named Heidi?

So B. It, published in 2004, sends twelve-year-old Heidi on a journey to uncover her family's past and the story of her mentally disabled mother.

Your Pie, a pizza chain inspired by its founder's honeymoon on the island of Ischia, began in which Georgia city?

Athens got the first Your Pie in 2008, after Drew French watched brick ovens on Ischia, off the coast of Naples, turn out custom pizzas in a hurry.

Charlie Papazian, who declared his own birthday National Pie Day, is far better known as a champion of which hobby?

Homebrewing made his name: the nuclear engineering graduate wrote The Complete Joy of Home Brewing and founded the Great American Beer Festival.

Which religious community created a frugal lemon pie that uses every part of the fruit except the seeds?

The Shakers could not grow lemons in the Midwest, and old accounts call them the first food their North Union community ever bought, so the thrifty version used the whole fruit.

The navy bean pie, a sweet spiced custard pie, is closely associated with which American religious movement?

The Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad encouraged followers to eat it in place of certain soul-food ingredients, and Muhammad Ali's personal chef later published a recipe.

Which Blake Edwards comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis was promoted as having the greatest pie fight ever?

The Great Race spent five days shooting the battle in a royal bakery set, with colourful cream pies in raspberry, strawberry and lemon.

The graham cracker, crushed for countless pie crusts, was inspired by Sylvester Graham, who followed which profession?

Minister is right: the Presbyterian preacher was a dietary reformer in the temperance movement, and his sermons inspired graham flour and graham bread too.

Which nursery-rhyme character, forever linked with pudding and pie, upsets the girls by kissing them?

Georgie Porgie has been linked to real figures such as King George I and the Duke of Buckingham, but those conjectures remain unsubstantiated.

Which mobile operating system named its ninth major version Pie, the last dessert name it put on a public release?

Android nearly had a pie years earlier: one release was codenamed Key Lime Pie, then renamed because, Google said, very few people know the taste.

Pinkie Pie, a party-planning baker who works at Sugarcube Corner, is a main character in which animated franchise?

My Little Pony gives her full name as Pinkamena Diane Pie, and she lives in the flat above the bakery with a pet alligator called Gummy.

Which Beatles record includes both 'Honey Pie' and the much shorter, stranger 'Wild Honey Pie'?

The White Album has Paul McCartney's Honey Pie, a pastiche of 1920s flapper dance music, and he recorded Wild Honey Pie at the end of another song's session.

Which future solo star formed the rock band Humble Pie in 1969 with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces?

Peter Frampton came from The Herd and, like Marriott, was tired of being a teen heart-throb; he left Humble Pie in 1971.

Which American children's TV host made a pie in the face his trademark, claiming over 20,000 were thrown in his career?

Soupy Sales turned the gag into an art form with endless variations, and was once floored when a young fan threw a frozen pie at his neck.

Which labor activist coined the phrase 'pie in the sky' in a 1911 song mocking Salvation Army hymns?

Joe Hill wrote The Preacher and the Slave for the Wobblies, who mocked their hymn-singing street rivals as the Starvation Army.

In British India, a 'pie' had nothing to do with pastry: it was the smallest unit of what?

Currency is right: the pie was the smallest coin of all, with 12 to the anna and 192 to the rupee, until it was withdrawn in 1947.

Before iceboxes, what was the 'pie safe' found in many American kitchens of the 1700s and 1800s?

A ventilated cupboard kept insects and vermin off the baking; its tin door panels were punched with holes, often in patterns such as eagles, stars or a church.

Which small East Coast state, whose official flower is the peach blossom, made peach pie its official dessert?

Delaware wrote peach pie into its state code in 2009, more than a century after adopting the peach blossom as its floral emblem in 1895.