December 25, 2010

The Real American Pie

Mince pie was once inextricable from our national identity. Blamed for bad health, murderous dreams, the downfall of Prohibition, and the decline of the white race, it nonetheless persisted as an American staple through the 1940s. So what happened?

Earlier this year, “The Real American Pie” garnered the James Beard Foundation Award for best newspaper feature writing for Cliff Doerksen, who died last week at the age of forty-seven.

posted by in announcements, food, history, journalism | * | 9 comments 

comments

  1. Sheila Ryan on December 25th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    Most remarkably, mince pie achieved and maintained its hegemony despite the fact that everyone—including those who loved it—agreed that it reliably caused indigestion, provoked nightmares, and commonly afflicted the overindulgent with disordered thinking, hallucinations, and sometimes death.

    Consider the case of Albert Allen of Chicago, arrested in 1907 for shooting his wife in the head. “It was this way,” Allen was quoted as saying by the Trenton Times, “I ate three pieces of mince pie at 11 o’clock and got to dreaming that I was shaking dice. The other fellow was cheating and I tried to shoot his fingers off. When I awoke, I was holding the pistol in my hand and my wife was shot.”

  2. Joel Bernstein on December 25th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

    According to diet guru Horace Fletcher, the toxin-free “digestion-ash” generated by his system would emerge from the body “in little balls ranging in size from a pea to a so-called Queen Olive” and “have only the odor of hot clay or a hot biscuit.”)

  3. Joel Bernstein on December 25th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    All this talk of mince makes me think of this guy.

  4. Michael Smith on December 25th, 2010 at 5:07 pm

    Among their many other amazing attributes, mince pies were said to remain “good” almost indefinitely.

  5. Rick Neece on December 25th, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    I don’t think I’ve ever had real mincemeat pie. The mincemeat I remember: orange rind and raisins and other stuff, but no meat. I could eat the shit out of the pie I remember. I don’t remember who of nmy relatives might have made it. I haven’t seen it on a table for years and years.

  6. Sheila Ryan on December 25th, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    My mother made the fruity mincemeat you describe. It was especially fun to help her in the kitchen around holiday times.

  7. Deron Bauman on December 25th, 2010 at 7:32 pm

    Rick, we had that kind in St. Louis visiting grandparents when I was a kid.

  8. Sheila Ryan on December 25th, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    When I return to KC, let’s make real mince pie. I’ll bring the suet.

  9. The Real American Pie on December 30th, 2010 at 9:33 am

    [...] at the age of forty-seven, won’t be around to keep researching and baking mince pies.  [via clusterflock] [...]

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