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What qualifies as a pie?

Gonolz

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Aug 6, 2002
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Hot dog thread spinoff. It got me thinking, what is a pie?

Is a pepperoni pizzas really a pie? When someone says "I'm in the mood for a pie" it doesn't occur to me that they mean pizza anymore than when someone says "I'm in the mood for a sandwich" that they want a hot dog.

When you go in to Casey's, do you ask for a slice of pie?

If I order apple pie, can I get a pizza with apples?
 
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Maybe I'm wrong, but my understanding is that referring to a pizza as a pie is mostly a New York/east coast thing. You don't hear a lot of midwesterners talking about going out for a pie when they're talking about pizza. We just call it pizza.
 
Pizza =/= pie. I vehemently disagree with my east coast brothers on this issue. Pizza is an entree, not a dessert. I also disagree with my UK brothers. There's no such thing as a meat pie. There's the novelty pot-pie, but that's frozen poor garbage food. One could dress a casserole with a pie-like crust. But that's just pure decadence.
 
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Pizza is the only thing you can call a pie that's not the tasty treat we're all familiar with
 
Pizza =/= pie. I vehemently disagree with my east coast brothers on this issue. Pizza is an entree, not a dessert. I also disagree with my UK brothers. There's no such thing as a meat pie. There's the novelty pot-pie, but that's frozen poor garbage food. One could dress a casserole with a pie-like crust. But that's just pure decadence.
So, you believe that only desserts can be pies? Is it the world's fault that no one in your circle can cook well enough to make a homemade pot pie?

pie

noun
a baked food having a filling of fruit, meat, pudding, etc., prepared in a pastry-lined pan or dish and often topped with a pastry crust: apple pie; meat pie.
a layer cake with a filling of custard, cream jelly, or the like:
 
Hot dog thread spinoff. It got me thinking, what is a pie?

Is a pepperoni pizzas really a pie? When someone says "I'm in the mood for a pie" it doesn't occur to me that they mean pizza anymore than when someone says "I'm in the mood for a sandwich" that they want a hot dog.

When you go in to Casey's, do you ask for a slice of pie?

If I order apple pie, can I get a pizza with apples?
 
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Cheesecake is actually a pie. Fact.
Stayed at the Parker House in Boston once. Mrs. LC got a tour of the kitchen. Quite a history to that place.

The Boston cream pie was invented there. So, of course, were Parker House rolls. Malcolm X used to be a waiter there. And Ho Chi Minh was a pastry chef (although not the one who invented the pie or the rolls). They still have the table he used. They say the Vietnamese government keeps trying to buy it.

It's also where JFK proposed to Jackie.

Nice hotel, too. Great location.
 
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Stayed at the Parker House in Boston once. Mrs. LC got a tour of the kitchen. Quite a history to that place.

The Boston cream pie was invented there. So, of course, were Parker House rolls. Malcolm X used to be a waiter there. And Ho Chi Minh was a pastry chef (although not the one who invented the pie or the rolls). They still have the table he used. They say the Vietnamese government keeps trying to buy it.

It's also where JFK proposed to Jackie.

Nice hotel, too. Great location.

Yep, I've been there. Had the Parker House rolls, baked scrod, Boston baked beans and the Boston cream pie. All of it was great except the baked beans which my wife and I really did not care for. It was very bland and not as good as even generic canned beans imo.
 
So, you believe that only desserts can be pies? Is it the world's fault that no one in your circle can cook well enough to make a homemade pot pie?

pie

noun
a baked food having a filling of fruit, meat, pudding, etc., prepared in a pastry-lined pan or dish and often topped with a pastry crust: apple pie; meat pie.
a layer cake with a filling of custard, cream jelly, or the like:

Yep. Shepherd's pie is very much a pie. A restaurant owner told me the true version would have lamb in it, but most place go with chunks of beef or more frequently ground beef now. No fruit of course.
 
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Yep. Shepherd's pie is very much a pie. A restaurant owner told me the true version would have lamb in it, but most place go with chunks of beef or more frequently ground beef now. No fruit of course.
A real shepherd's pie has lamb. If it's made with beef, it's a cottage pie.
 
Maybe I'm wrong, but my understanding is that referring to a pizza as a pie is mostly a New York/east coast thing. You don't hear a lot of midwesterners talking about going out for a pie when they're talking about pizza. We just call it pizza.

Pizza as we know it (dough, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese with maybe some additional toppings) is an American invention and they were specifically called pizza pies in part to differentiate it from older "pizzas".

Prior to the very early 1900s, the Italians were making what they called pizza but it's closer to what we in the modern day would just call flatbread. In other words, just baked thin and crispy dough with some random sporadic toppings placed on it. In fact it's likely that pizza and Greek pita have the exact same origins and were originally the same thing just a flat but leaven bread.

The most common pre-1900s pizzas in Italy were just the flat bread topped with one topping with oil or fat in it such as olives, pork lard slices/Lardo, any fatty sausage, fatty fish of any type including anchovies or herring, and/or any type of cheese. After the discovery of America, tomatoes became a topping as well but it was just a topping by itself not as a pizza sauce.

Those early Italian pizzas would have looked similar to this.

Olive pizza

Focaccia-6-edited.jpg


Lardo pizza

20100211-top-this-otto-final-dish-thumb-500x375-140769.jpg


Then in the 1890s, the Margherita pizza came to the forefront (it may have existed in a similar form 100 years earlier but rather than in the shape of a flag, using the toppings to make the shape of a flower) but it didn't look like the modern Margherita pizza with the toppings mixed in to create an interesting flavor.

Modern Margherita Pizza

Margherita-Pizza-018-800x1000.jpg


Instead the toppings were chosen solely to make the shape of the Italian flag.

pizza.jpg


So neither the ancient pizza nor even the then Margherita Pizza look like what we think of as modern pizza. Instead it was Italian-Americans in New York and New Jersey in the very early 1900s (1902-1905) that simultaneously invented what we really think of as the modern pizza, in other words matching a marinara sauce with mozzarella cheese as the topping. In New York City it was called a "pizza pie" to differentiate it from other old style pizzas being made in the city. Meanwhile in New Jersey they called it "tomato pies" (which is completely different than the Philadelphia tomato pies which are thick, risen bread topped with tomatoes and parmesan only).

Lombardi's NYC "pizza pie" from 1905

43243357_UGco09hgACgaokkWsu3AiffxOud9d26KSFXJASzD7qg.0.jpg


New Jersey tomato pie from Papas one of the first

pie.png


From those two sources the NYC pizza pie and the New Jersey tomato pie comes basically everything we think of as pizza.
 
Maybe I'm wrong, but my understanding is that referring to a pizza as a pie is mostly a New York/east coast thing. You don't hear a lot of midwesterners talking about going out for a pie when they're talking about pizza. We just call it pizza.

Pizza as we know it (dough, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese with maybe some additional toppings) is an American invention and they were specifically called pizza pies in part to differentiate it from older "pizzas".

Prior to the very early 1900s, the Italians were making what they called pizza but it's closer to what we in the modern day would just call flatbread. In other words, just baked thin and crispy dough with some random sporadic toppings placed on it. In fact it's likely that pizza and Greek pita have the exact same origins and were originally the same thing just a flat but leaven bread.

The most common pre-1900s pizzas in Italy were just the flat bread topped with one topping with oil or fat in it such as olives, pork lard slices/Lardo, any fatty sausage, fatty fish of any type including anchovies or herring, and/or any type of cheese. After the discovery of America, tomatoes became a topping as well but it was just a topping by itself not as a pizza sauce.

Those early Italian pizzas would have looked similar to this.

Olive pizza

Focaccia-6-edited.jpg


Lardo pizza

20100211-top-this-otto-final-dish-thumb-500x375-140769.jpg


Then in the 1890s, the Margherita pizza came to the forefront (it may have existed in a similar form 100 years earlier but rather than in the shape of a flag, using the toppings to make the shape of a flower) but it didn't look like the modern Margherita pizza with the toppings mixed in to create an interesting flavor.

Modern Margherita Pizza

Margherita-Pizza-018-800x1000.jpg


Instead the toppings were chosen solely to make the shape of the Italian flag.

pizza.jpg


So neither the ancient pizza nor even the then Margherita Pizza look like what we think of as modern pizza. Instead it was Italian-Americans in New York and New Jersey in the very early 1900s (1902-1905) that simultaneously invented what we really think of as the modern pizza, in other words matching a marinara sauce with mozzarella cheese as the topping. In New York City it was called a "pizza pie" to differentiate it from other old style pizzas being made in the city. Meanwhile in New Jersey they called it "tomato pies" (which is completely different than the Philadelphia tomato pies which are thick, risen bread topped with tomatoes and parmesan only).

Lombardi's NYC "pizza pie" from 1905

43243357_UGco09hgACgaokkWsu3AiffxOud9d26KSFXJASzD7qg.0.jpg


New Jersey tomato pie from Papa's one of the first

pie.png


From those two simultaneously created pizza variations the NYC pizza pie and NJ tomato pie, came basically everything we think of as "pizza".
 
Pizza as we know it (dough, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese with maybe some additional toppings) is an American invention and they were specifically called pizza pies in part to differentiate it from older "pizzas".

Prior to the very early 1900s, the Italians were making what they called pizza but it's closer to what we in the modern day would just call flatbread. In other words, just baked thin and crispy dough with some random sporadic toppings placed on it. In fact it's likely that pizza and Greek pita have the exact same origins and were originally the same thing just a flat but leaven bread.

The most common pre-1900s pizzas in Italy were just the flat bread topped with one topping with oil or fat in it such as olives, pork lard slices/Lardo, any fatty sausage, fatty fish of any type including anchovies or herring, and/or any type of cheese. After the discovery of America, tomatoes became a topping as well but it was just a topping by itself not as a pizza sauce.

Those early Italian pizzas would have looked similar to this.

Olive pizza

Focaccia-6-edited.jpg


Lardo pizza

20100211-top-this-otto-final-dish-thumb-500x375-140769.jpg


Then in the 1890s, the Margherita pizza came to the forefront (it may have existed in a similar form 100 years earlier but rather than in the shape of a flag, using the toppings to make the shape of a flower) but it didn't look like the modern Margherita pizza with the toppings mixed in to create an interesting flavor.

Modern Margherita Pizza

Margherita-Pizza-018-800x1000.jpg


Instead the toppings were chosen solely to make the shape of the Italian flag.

pizza.jpg


So neither the ancient pizza nor even the then Margherita Pizza look like what we think of as modern pizza. Instead it was Italian-Americans in New York and New Jersey in the very early 1900s (1902-1905) that simultaneously invented what we really think of as the modern pizza, in other words matching a marinara sauce with mozzarella cheese as the topping. In New York City it was called a "pizza pie" to differentiate it from other old style pizzas being made in the city. Meanwhile in New Jersey they called it "tomato pies" (which is completely different than the Philadelphia tomato pies which are thick, risen bread topped with tomatoes and parmesan only).

Lombardi's NYC "pizza pie" from 1905

43243357_UGco09hgACgaokkWsu3AiffxOud9d26KSFXJASzD7qg.0.jpg


New Jersey tomato pie from Papa's one of the first

pie.png


From those two simultaneously created pizza variations the NYC pizza pie and NJ tomato pie, came basically everything we think of as "pizza".
Interesting, but once was enough.
 
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