# What is the deal with pie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2005, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764 "2005-07-23T03:30:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/1 "2005-07-23T03:30:38Z")
Really now, what is the deal with this weird meme? I have been wondering this for years. Long before _Weeble and Bob_, I have seen weird references and sudden non-sequitur responses of “Pie!” or “Mmm boy, Pie is delicious!” “I sure love pie” and “Keep your fork… THERE’S PIE!”. Where did this come from? The earliest memory I have of this is the “pie” scene in the movie _Michael_, where they keep talking about how great pie is and even make up a song about the greatness of pie. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/2 "2005-07-23T03:49:31Z")
[Pie In the Sky](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pie1.htm) > [@](#): > > “I was wondering if you could tell me where the phrase pie in the sky came from?” > > It comes from the Industrial Workers of the World, the anarchist-syndicalist labour organisation formed in the US in 1905, often called the Wobblies. > … > This last song, dating from 1911, was aimed directly at the Salvation Army, > > CHORUS: > You will eat, bye and bye, > In that glorious land above the sky; > Work and pray, live on hay, > You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. > > By 1911, other expressions using pie had already been around for some time, such as nice as pie and easy as pie and it had begun to be used for a bribe or political patronage… ---
**Author:** ![feppytweed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/feppytweed/32/4280_2.png) [@feppytweed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/feppytweed)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/3 "2005-07-23T04:07:31Z")
“When you die, if you get a choice between regular heaven and pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a joke, but if its not, mmm boy!” --Jack Handey ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/4 "2005-07-23T04:09:00Z")
It might have been _The Andy Griffith Show_ and Aunt Bea’s pies that established pie as a stereotypical rural food. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/5 "2005-07-23T04:38:14Z")
Pop songs from the pie-crazy 1920s and '30s: _I Like Pie, I Like Cake (But I Like You Best Of All_, 1925 _Make Yourself A Happiness Pie_, 1931 _Hot Jazz Pie_, 1932 _Let’s Have Another Cup O’ Coffee (And Let’s Have Another Piece O’ Pie)_, 1932 _Sweetie Pie_, 1934 ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/6 "2005-07-23T17:43:02Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > I have seen weird references…“Keep your fork… THERE’S PIE!”. > > Where did this come from? There’s a [link on Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/embarrass/celebrity/keepfork.asp) for this one. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/7 "2005-07-23T18:44:15Z")
Pie is a sublime treat, and has always been. But pie is not just any old treat. Can you picture anyone’s eyes lighting up quite the same way when told, “Keep your fork – there’s cake? ice cream? Pudding? Fruit cup? Cobbler? Parfait? Tirami sù?” No. You can’t. (All right, maybe cobbler.) But what, as the OP so perceptively asked, _is_ the deal with pie? What leads sages, poets, singers and plain folks to praise the filled, baked, and crusted viand to the heavens and associate it with home, family, and proof of a loving Og? Well, first, pie ain’t the easiest thing to make and bake. Never mind your pre-this, ready-that frozen crust-in-a-carton. It’s all right to fool around with Sara Lee now and then, but you still gotta come home to mama. And mama made 'em from scratch. Flour. Rolling pin. (Yes, they _were_ good for something besides throwing at papa when he came home wheezing Irish ballads after a night with the boys.) Shortening. (This used to mean plain old pig-hog LARD, kiddies. _Mmm_ mmm mmm.) And like that. Dough shaped, scored, trimmed at the gun’ls and artfully fluted. Not rocket science, but plenty of old-fashioned _w-o-r-k_ (or as mama spelled it, _l-o-v-e_) before you even put peeler to apple. Yes, pie had it all over Hallmark: it meant you cared enough to _make_ the very best. Came the 1930s and we _thought_ we were entering Complicated Fast-Paced Modern Life with Jell-O, Minute Rice, Crisco (“which digests so easily” – my, how scientific) and its competitor Spry (after a Bulova watch, the _second_ product ever advertised on television). But we weren’t so up-to-date as all that. Pie still loomed large on the culinary landscape — a landscaped traversed tirelessly by a pie-loving gourmand who made his name writing restaurant and hotel guides under the name Duncan Hines. It would be a decade or more before Mr. Hines was rendered down to pale brownish flakes, mixed with powdered egg, and poured into boxes that made quick, easy, yummy cake. In the chrome-plated, convenience-happy baby-boom years, cake would become the new pie. But cake is _not_ pie. Cake is a dessert, a spongy, thickly-frosted slice o’ sweetness meant for kiddy parties, Kaffeeklatsches and shmancy-fancy dinners. Pie is more substantial; pie has _gravitas._ You could _live_ on pie; Jack Kerouac’s protagonist in _On the Road_ did just that on the road. Because pie, like the Earth we come from, has a _crust._ Like the Earth’s, that crust is warm, crumbly, fragrant, nourishing. Maybe not to the waistline or the cardiovascular system — where all that shortening tends to hang around — but to those way-in-the-back taste buds that are closest to the human soul. Pie’s constituents, likewise, tend to be a few degrees less removed from the Earth than the gooey-swirly-marbly productions that go into cake. Berries, bananas, coconuts, cream. Even the vaunted rhubarb, so bitter only a pound of sugar can make it palatable, finds a home in pie. (A rhubarb _cake_ would just sit on the table, even after a few guests tried a slice and said, “Uhhmmm…Not bad. I guess. Yes, I’d love some more coffee. Please.”) One need hardly bring up the pot, meat, chicken, spinach, or vegetable pies that literalize pie’s unspoken premise of “a meal in itself” – other than to say that they are simple, homey, stick-to-your ribs cooking of the first order. Like the sweet pies once so ubiquitous at dessert or with coffee when friends came calling. Like the simple (if complex) carbohydrates of biscuits, popovers and dumplings, these things were once our ballast for living. Most of us now alive grew up in a cake-mix, instant-pudding world, not a pie world. What was sweet to the tongue too often left the soul untouched, except perhaps for a vague, hydrogenated sheen of oily residue. Even a mediocre piece of pie doesn’t quite leave that aftertaste. And a good, hot, fresh-baked forkful — why, there’s nothing to compare with it. Proust may have had his madeleine. But we’ve got it all over him. We’ve got pie. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/8 "2005-07-23T19:03:55Z")
We _have_ pie, and that is GOOD. However **BoD** , I must take you to task for you slighting of rhubarb cake: > [@](#): > > (A rhubarb cake would just sit on the table, even after a few guests tried a slice and said, “Uhhmmm…Not bad. I guess. Yes, I’d love some more coffee. Please.”) I make a rhubarb cake, with walnuts and cinnamon, almond extract, allspice, and maple flavored icing. It’s damned hard to keep out of people’s mouths. When last I baked it, I got a grand total of ONE out of 16 pieces. ☹ Soon, I’ll bake another. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/9 "2005-07-23T19:09:01Z")
The Rock is responsible for the fairly recent popularization of random expressions of affinity for pie, if you swing that way, and strudel, if you bat for the other team. As such, and because I’m a fan of a ska band known as the Pietasters, I’m inclined to believe that ‘pie’ expressions are generally used because they’re double-entendres. ---
**Author:** ![RandomLetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@RandomLetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandomLetters)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/10 "2005-07-23T19:19:38Z")
Well, when come back, bring pie! ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/11 "2005-07-23T19:24:01Z")
If you haven’t submitted that essay to a magazine or two, **Beware of Doug** , go do it now. That’s one of the most artfully written pieces I’ve seen on SDMB. Great work. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/12 "2005-07-23T20:25:05Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > We _have_ pie, and that is GOOD. > However **BoD** , I must take you to task for you slighting of rhubarb cake:I make a rhubarb cake, with walnuts and cinnamon, almond extract, allspice, and maple flavored icing. It’s damned hard to keep out of people’s mouths. When last I baked it, I got a grand total of ONE out of 16 pieces. ☹ Soon, I’ll bake another. 🙂 Well, good on ya, **Squink**. Someday, when science conquers diabetes, I hope to taste a piece. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-deal-with-pie/313764/13 "2005-07-23T21:32:07Z")
I agree with the OP. The whole pie thing has gotten, well, **irrational**. (Rimshot.)