Pies in the Modern World: A National Emblem Reclaimed

Yet even while pies were relegated to an occasional Sunday treat and appearances at holiday meals, they lingered as an abiding symbol of the American home. Through the various world struggles of the twentieth century, popular culture continually invoked pies as the embodiment of the nation’s abundant goodness. With the end of World War II and with women, reluctantly or happily, returning to the home, pies experienced a small rebound in fashion.

There was one difference, however: Advances in food science and technology had hatched all manner of ingredients that caused the making of a pie to become less of a challenging art form. Delicate cream and chiffon fillings became foolproof with the availability of instant-pudding mixes. Fruit, in heavy syrup that would readily congeal, was sold in cans. That age-old stumbling block to a flawless pie, the crust, was made easier to achieve as well. Joining the ranks of ready-made crusts already available in stores, frozen in an aluminum tin, or sold in a box to be mixed with a little water, women’s magazines and newspapers’ “lifestyle” sections divulged recipes for quick crusts constructed out of little more than cookie and cracker crumbs. Well into the 1960s and 1970s, crusts shaped from the likes of potato chips, popcorn, and canned fried onion rings graced many a dinner-party table. If crusts were no longer flaky (or even very tasty), if fillings were not as delicately redolent of cream, eggs, and butter—or of the bracing savor of freshly picked fruits and the simmer of stewed meat—at least pies were once again being baked and enjoyed on more of a regular basis than they had been in a century.