Imagine your 10-year-old son asking you ”Mommy, what is pies? where did it come from?” while you give him his most favorite dish of the whole wide world. Startled a little bit? Don’t be. I have a brief and nicepie history so you can feed your hungry child’s mind and body. The story goes…
Once upon a time, all the way to the ancient time ( that’s right, the B.C time)…
The Egyptian invented the pie so they can store most of their food in the hot sandy desert weather surrounding the Nile. Around 2000 BC, they baked the pie with honey, nuts, and fruits. As time progress, they put savory meat in the pies so it can be stored longer.
The Egyptian pie crust is far more different than the modern pie crust that we have. They did not have baking sheets, or the pan, or something similar to bake the pie. Rather, they had to use the pie crust itself to bake, resulting the pie crust is inedible.
Pie for the Pharaoh
Needless to say, every visitors from different parts of the world were fascinating with the pie, so everyone is trying to steal the recipe. It was believed that somewhere between the 1400 B.C. and the 600 B.C.. the pie recipe spreaded from the Egyptians to the Greeks. From then, the pie makes it way slowly to Rome, around 100 B.C.
Similar to the Egyptian pies, the earliest Roman pies have inedible crust as well. However, they are the 1st to develop a complete pie recipes: honey pie and rye-crusted goat cheese pie. It has gotten so famous that all Europe knew about it, even Oxford dictionary recognized the word “pie” in the 14th century.
Well, we should know by now if Oxford records it, the English already had some versions of “pies” popularized in their land. Thus our puff pastry history were born. The Brits laied out a nice story line up for us.
And then, the French came along with their story. Fun and fascinating eh?
And then, the British settlers brought the pies to America, then it penetrate the American culture and our classic American pie was born.
