Jim from Abilene, Texas, says his Pennsylvania-born mother, used to bake a molasses-based tart called shoofly pie. The name most likely derives from the action of shooing away flies attracted to the sweet, sticky dessert. Found primarily in her home state, this dish sometimes goes by the name granger pie or pebble dash. A similar version, Montgomery pie, with a dash of lemon or buttermilk, is found in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Long ago, mincemeat pie usually contained meat or suet, but now usually consists of sweet ingredients cut up, or minced, into tiny pieces. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Shoofly Pie”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Jim Gemberling from Abilene, Texas.
Jim from Abilene, welcome to the show.
Hey, Jim.
What’s up?
Oh, hello, thank you guys.
Well, I believe I was responding to a question you would ask about pies or unusual dessert names.
Yeah, we’re always talking about food and language, so it sounds like us.
Oh, yeah, well, I’m all about food and language, too, because I talk while I eat, and I try not to let people see my food.
But when I was growing up, my mom was from Pennsylvania, and there was a pie called a shoe fly pie.
And I was a child and really remembered I liked it very well, although I’ve never seen it since.
We’ve been in Texas.
And there was also a mincemeat pie, but it never had meat with it.
So I didn’t really understand where those came from.
Okay, shoe fly pie and mincemeat pie.
Well, your description of shoofly pie sounds right on the money because it’s pretty much localized to the Pennsylvania area.
It’s a really sweet pie, right?
A lot of molasses and…
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Down here, pecan pie is a good…
Oh, yeah.
But the shoofly pie, you know, as a child, I was thinking very tangential or very, you know, on task thinking.
I’m going, shoo, I don’t get that.
And I don’t see any flies around.
I think that’s the kind of pie you put in a window.
The flies will come pretty soon.
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it.
So it’s S-H-O-O, shoo.
Like shoo fly.
Get out of here, fly.
Get out of here, fly.
Right.
And it’s more like a cake, really, right?
Or a tart.
Yeah, maybe a tart.
Sometimes it has a top.
It was really kind of, I remember being sticky and very tasty as I grew up.
Also, that mincemeat pie, as I recall, that was a very spicy kind of, not hot spicy, but it had a lot of clove in it or whatever.
And I don’t know.
I’ve looked it up since we talked about it.
Some of them even have meat in it, I guess, but I don’t remember meat being in it.
Well, they used to.
These days, mincemeat, at most, it’ll have a little fat in it, like beef fat or something like that.
But usually these days, there’s no meat in mincemeat.
Okay.
Yeah, just little things all cut up, like raisins.
Well, minced to cut into fine pieces.
Oh, yeah.
I bet the raisin thing I remember.
I think that was a big part.
I thought clove was a big part, too, as I recall.
But, again, those were long days ago, and it just made me think of these neat things when I heard you guys on the radio.
Yeah.
Well, Jim, there you go.
Shoofly pie comes from Pennsylvania.
A lot of people think of it as being something to do with the Pennsylvania Dutch.
There’s a variant called Montgomery pie.
Did you hear about this ever?
No, I haven’t heard about this.
It’s from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
It’s similar to shoe fly pie, except sometimes they add lemon juice.
Oh, okay.
And maybe buttermilk is a topping.
Oh, that sounds interesting.
I’ll have to look into that somewhere.
Yeah, sometimes it’s called Granger Pie or Pebble Dash.
Mm—
I haven’t heard of those either.
But, oh, gosh, those are neat, interesting terms to be looking into.
I’m going to surprise some bakers here in my town.
Jim, thank you so much for your call.
We really appreciate it.
Sure, it’s no problem.
I just enjoy listening to you.
So thanks a lot.
I appreciate it.
It’s our pleasure.
Thanks for being with us, Jim.
Bye.
Love those food questions.
I do.
I was reading one of the recipes from 1908.
Yeah.
Because recipes, they kind of don’t really grow stale, right?
Right.
But one thing that changes is the measurements.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
So this one says, instead of saying a quarter cup of butter or a particle stick or a stick of butter or a tablespoon of butter, it says butter the size of one egg.
Oh, I love that.
I do.
But eggs can vary a lot.
So it’s kind of emphasizing the make it up as you go along aspect of a lot of recipes.
It’s not necessarily chemistry.
Some of it is just practice and art.
Right.
I love that.
You might be pulling it from the churn, right?
Yeah, yeah.
About the size of an egg.
Yeah, because if you handle eggs all day, you know what an egg feels like and looks like in your hand, right?
That’s right.
Is there a regional dish from your area that you’d like to talk about?
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