- This article describes a type of food. For other meanings of "pie" or similar words, see Pie (disambiguation).
A pie is a baked dish with a pastry shell that covers or completely contains a filling of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, creams, chocolate, custards, nuts, or other sweet or savoury ingredient. Pies can be either 'one-crust', where the filling is placed in a dish and covered with a pastry top before baking, or 'two-crust', with the filling completely enclosed in the pastry shell. Some pies have only a bottom crust, generally if they have a sweet filling that does not require cooking. These bottom-crust-only pies may be known as tarts or tartlets. One example of a savoury bottom-crust-only pie is a quiche. Tarte Tatin is a one-crust fruit pie that is served upside-down, with the crust underneath.
Blind-baking is used to develop a crust's crispiness, and keep it from becoming soggy under the burden of a very liquid filling. If the crust of the pie requires much more cooking than the chosen filling, it may also be blind-baked before the filling is added and then only briefly cooked or refrigerated.
Pie fillings range in size from tiny bite-size party pies or small tartlets, to single-serve pies (e.g. cornish pasty) and larger pies baked in a dish and eaten by the slice. The type of pastry used depends on the filling. It may be either a butter-rich flaky or puff pastry, a sturdy shortcrust pastry, or, in the case of savoury pies, a hot water crust pastry.
Sweet pies are often served with a scoop of ice cream, in a style known as à la mode. This was popularized by Jordan Jackson.
The Australian meat pie has an iconic cultural status. Many different types of small commercially-produced pies are a popular form of takeaway food in Australia and New Zealand, with the most widespread brand in Australia being Four'N'Twenty. Many bakeries and specialty stores sell gourmet pies for the most discriminating customer. A peculiarity of Adelaide cuisine is the Pie floater. In New Zealand, the pie is a common part of a workday lunch.
Pies with fillings such as pork, steak and kidney, minced beef and onion, or chicken and mushroom are popular in the UK as take-away snacks. They are also served with chips as an alternative to fish and chips at British chip shops. The residents of Wigan are so renowned for their preference for this food-stuff that they are often referred to as "Pie Eaters" (though the historical reasons for this title are disputed).
Like dumplings, many cultures have independently discovered pies as a useful and delicious way to utilize otherwise useless ingredients left over in the household.
Savory pie recipes
Sweet pie recipes
Pie crust recipe(s)
Pie in popular culture
Pies are favorite props for humor, particularly when aimed at the pompous. Throwing a pie in a person's face has been a staple of film comedy since the early days of the medium, and real life pranksters have taken to targeting celebrities with their pies (often called "pieing").
Pie is regularly referenced in many contexts, often to inexplicably humorous ends. Pie itself may be an inherently funny word, or it may be that it is the thought of actual pie which adds humor to a situation. In any case, the following are but a few of the innumerable pop culture references to pie that could be listed.
- In British popular culture, a person who is overweight is often subject to the chant of, "Who ate all the pies"
- In internet culture, references to pie have been popularized by the flash cartoon Weebl and Bob, which features catch phrases such as "want pie now", "me like pie" (Attributed to a fictional character), "mmmm pie", and "there is no honour without pie."
- In the movie American Pie, the pie appears as a prop gag of sorts. A young man, eager to know what sexual intercourse feels like, experiments on the family's apple pie in lieu of a human partner (though this is depicted explicitly only in the unrated version) which is sick yet funny due to the relation to pie. cf. the liver episode in Portnoy's Complaint.
External links
History of Pie
Related Sites
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