Pie à la Mode (literally "pie in the current fashion"/ "fashionable pie") is
pie
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), swe ...
served with
ice cream
Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert. It may be made from milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as str ...
. The French culinary phrase ''à la mode'' used in the name of this American dessert is also encountered in other dishes such as ''
boeuf à la mode'' (beef à la mode).
History
Pie à la Mode was allegedly invented at the Cambridge Hotel in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
Washington County,
New York, in the 1890s.
[
]
Charles Watson Townsend, in Cambridge, NY
The claim is that while visiting the hotel, Charles Watson Townsend ordered a slice of apple pie
An apple pie is a fruit pie in which the principal filling ingredient is apples. The earliest printed recipe is from England. Apple pie is often served with whipped cream, ice cream ("apple pie à la mode"), or cheddar cheese. It is gene ...
with ice cream. When asked by another guest what he called the dish, he named it ''Pie à la Mode''. Townsend subsequently ordered it by that name every day during his stay. When he later ordered it by that name at Delmonico's Restaurant
Delmonico's is the name of a series of restaurants that operated in New York City, with the present version located at 56 Beaver Street in the Financial District of Manhattan. The original version was widely recognized as the United States ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, the waiter responded that he had never heard of it. Townsend chastised the waiter by stating:
The manager, when called by the waiter, declared "Delmonico's never intends that any other shall get ahead of it... Forthwith, pie à la mode will be featured on the menu every day".[ A reporter for the '']New York Sun
''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...
'' newspaper overheard the disturbance and wrote an article about it the next day. Soon, Pie à la Mode became a standard on menus around the United States.
When Charles Watson Townsend died on May 20, 1936, a controversy developed as to who really invented Pie à la Mode. The ''New York Times'' reported that "Pie à la Mode" was first invented by Townsend at the Cambridge Hotel in Cambridge, New York in the late 1800s. It was later reported by several sources that Townsend ordered pie and ice cream at the Cambridge Hotel in 1896, and thus invented the dessert. The legend also states that a reporter from ''The Sun'' newspaper in New York overheard a conversation between the manager of Delmonico's Restaurant and Charles Townsend. The reporter was said to have written about the incident in the very next issue of ''The Sun''.
John Gieriet in Duluth, Minnesota
A reporter from the '' St. Paul Pioneer Press'' read Townsend's obituary in the ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' and considered that the ''Times'' had incorrectly attributed the invention of pie à la mode to Townsend. The newspaper accordingly ran a story on May 23, 1936, about how the dessert was in fact invented inside a Superior Street restaurant in Duluth, Minnesota, in the 1880s. The St. Paul newspaper indicated the Duluth restaurant specifically served ice cream with blueberry pie. This was over a decade before Townsend first ordered pie with ice cream in New York, making Duluth the true birthplace of pie à la mode.
A grand opening bill of fare for the Hotel la Perl was published in the March 26, 1885, issue of the ''Duluth Daily Tribune''. The hotel was located at 501–503 West Superior Street in Duluth. The menu showed the hotel restaurant serving both vanilla ice cream and blueberry pie.
The owner of the hotel was John Gieriet. He was born in Tavetsch, Switzerland, on February 6, 1829. He later moved to France where he learned to speak French. Gieriet moved to the United States in 1854. In 1856, Gieriet was put in charge of food service at the White House under the administration of President Franklin Pierce. He continued in that position into the late 1850s when he served under the administration of President James Buchanan.
The Gieriets moved to Duluth in 1885 and purchased the Commercial Hotel, which had been built in 1884 by William Dambruck. John re-named the building Hotel la Perl. It was a large two-story wood-frame building with a flat roof. A saloon located on the first floor was converted into a restaurant and the rear laundry room was remodeled into a kitchen. On the Hotel la Perl's first day of business, Gieriet served up a fancy dinner that included French pickles, oysters, French peas, and Lake Superior trout. For dessert, he served warm blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream. Gieriet called the popular treat "pie à la mode". It was reported in the ''Duluth Herald'' that Duluthians in the 1880s often mispronounced the local invention as " mode". In 1886, the ''Duluth Weekly Tribune'' stated the Hotel la Perl had gained a "first-class reputation" under Gieriet's management. John continued to operate the Hotel la Perl until his wife became very ill in 1886. He ended up selling the hotel in August of that year.
Pie à la mode was not John Gieriet’s only invention. He received a United States patent for a railroad car ventilating apparatus on June 20, 1882. He also received a patent on October 30, 1899, for a type of fire escape. By 1910, Gieriet had moved to New York City, where he died on May 22, 1912, at the age of 83.[Flaherty, Mike: The Legends of Pie à la Mode, 2012 (Duluth Public Library)]
See also
* List of pies, tarts and flans
This is a list of pies, tarts and flans. A pie is a baked or fried dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweetness, sweet or Umami, savory ingredients. A tart is a baked dish con ...
* ''bœuf à la mode
Boeuf or Bœuf may refer to:
Place name
*Boeuf River, Arkansas
*Boeuf Township, Franklin County, Missouri
*Boeuf Township, Gasconade County, Missouri
Surname
*Alexis Bœuf (born 1986), French biathlete
*Dominique Boeuf (born 1968), French jockey
...
'', a French dish similar to a pot roast
Pot roast is an American beef dish made by slow-cooking a usually tough cut of beef in moist heat. Tougher cuts such as chuck steak, bottom round, short ribs and 7-bone roast are preferred for this technique. These cuts are American terms; di ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pie a la Mode
Pies
Ice cream