19 Pie Recipes You Must Bake Once in Your Life (2024)

FAQs

How many pie recipes were in the 1947 modern encyclopedia of cooking? ›

In 1947's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, 65 sweet pie varieties were listed.

Some recipes call for baking the pie in a 450 degree F oven to begin with, then turning down the oven to about 350 degrees F. This helps set the shape of the crust in recipes with a lot of fat; it can keep your crust from slouching.

First pies in North America

The Pilgrims and early settlers brought their pie recipes with them to North America, adapting to the ingredients and techniques available to them in the New World. Their first pies were based on berries and fruits pointed out to them by the Native North Americans.

The first written reference to a Roman pie is for a rye dough that was filled with a mixture of goat's cheese and honey. The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve a pie case.

Historians trace the origin of pie to the Egyptians back in 9500 BCE. In Egypt, the first pies were made with ground grains like barley, wheat, or oats combined with water. This “dough” was shaped into an oval and filled with savory ingredients like nuts, honey, and meat.

Gluten is what makes bread soft and stretchy – it's desirable in bread, but not in pie dough. Rather, pie dough should be flaky and tender! So, it's important to use cold butter and ice water with your flour, as the coldness interrupts gluten development.

Tip: Why the initial high oven temperature? Pie crust gains its flaky texture from the fat in the dough melting and producing steam — which happens most quickly and effectively at a higher temperature. Reducing the oven temperature after about 15 minutes allows the pie to bake fully without danger of burning.

So why 350 degrees F? It's good enough to make all those necessary steps happen quickly — even if your oven runs a little cold — and it's not so hot you have to worry about burning.

History of the Pie in Europe

Pies were also not intended for eating - they were commonly used to help meats last longer on sea voyages as they could be stacked easier. By the Medieval period, pies were used as a centrepiece for large banquets for important people at exclusive events.

Why is pie called pie? ›

The word "pie" is derived from the Latin word "pica," which means "magpie." This Latin term was used to describe a type of dish that contained a mixture of various ingredients, much like a magpie collects a variety of objects.

The Guinness world record for the most expensive pie cost customers to the Fence Gate Inn, Lancashire, UK £8,195 (then $14,260) or £1,024 (then $1,781) per slice when ordered by eight guests on 14 November 2005.

There are all kinds of pies — fruit pies, custard pies, transparent pies, meat pies, pot pies, hand pies. Everyone who bakes pies has a few favorites, and every baker will adjust the recipes to suit their particular tastes, so the numbers of pies is nearly infinite. There are over 30 types of pies in the world.

A coffin or coffyn referred to a container made of pastry, a precursor of the modern pie crust, and food was served in the coffin it had been cooked in. The first printed use of the word coffin as a box for a corpse appeared later, in the 16th century. Historians trace pies back to ancient times.

The Truncated History of Cookbooks and Class

The first recorded cookbook is said to be four clay tablets from 1700 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia, but by the 1300s, cookbooks were a norm for kings and nobles.

The standard expectation is that a cookbook should have between 70 and 100 recipes, but larger compendiums have at least 200.