pie

i love history. the thought that all the things we know today (or their predecessors) were invented out of necessity, desire, or just plain creativity. lately, when i look at something that is so commonplace i barely notice it, i like to look up its origins. so, while sitting at Marie Callendars today i looked up how pie came to be.

when long journeys were taken, and pottery wasn't disposable or abundant, or even easy to carry, an early form of pastry was invented to carry meats or sweets along. all sorts of pies were mentioned throughout history, seemingly beginnig with the greeks, and passed along and re-invented in many forms. I read that the first pie "shells" were hard and almost inedible, serving more as a baking dish than a crust. once the innards were eaten by a wealthy family, the hard crust that had soaked up the juices or gravies of what was in them were given to the beggars. no matter how hard it was, i bet it was good.

the strangest thing i read was that animals were often added so they could surprise the folks cutting open the pie. a hole was cut in the bottom of the crust and birds were stuffed into it - "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". but they didn't stop at birds. apparently the animals got larger, even a dwarf jumped out of one pie shell to entertain royalty.

one recipe referred to making a "bullet-proof dough", another referenced baking in a round pan to literally "cut corners" and stretch the expensive filling to cover the bottom crust. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was apparently depressed so a long-standing member of his family's staff made sure that a huckleberry pie and milk set on ice were there for him to eat every day. No doubt the character HuckleBerry Finn wasn't unrelated.

it seems bizarre to me NOT to wonder what started or created something that we use in everyday life, things we see, eat, touch, they all have a history that includes someone coming up with an idea that most likely was so far-fetched that it met resistance. hard to imagine in today's society - the invention of a pie vs. an operating system. it seems that whenever the world MUST've invented just about everything there is to invent, something new comes along that we can't imagine living without.

next time you look across the table or the room at something that seems incredibly ordinary, look up its history. it might just be a fascinating story.