Pie Trivia
There’s a lot of Pie Trivia out there. I’ve collected a few of my favorite quotes, jokes, and more, here. If you would like to see something added, do email me, as I’m sure there are lots of choice morsels that would be a lovely addition to this page that I may have missed, or not know about!
On March 12, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (HRES 224) recognizing March 14, 2009, as National Pi Day. (Source: NationalCalendar.com)
“How a Pie Fight Satirizes Whig-Tory Conflict…” A literary Pie-in-the Face in 1709. Carole Sargent (Source: Carole Sargent)
“We must have pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of pie.” David Mamet (Source: NY Times)
“I had a vision that a man came unto us on a flaming pie, and he said, ‘You are Beatles with an A.’ And so we were.” John Lennon, 1961 (Source: Wikipedia)
“No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes, As the soil we first stirred in making mud pies”. Oliver Wendell Holmes (Source: Smith College Monthly, 1905)
The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. (Source: Ask Me: Help Desk)
“On the shoals of roast beef and apple pie, all socialistic utopias founder.” Jeremy Rifkin (Source: “Apple Pie”, John T. Edge)
“If I were to create a coat of arms for our country, a pie would be its heraldic symbol.” —attributed to the figment known as Betty Crocker (Source: NPR, Talk of the Nation, “Iconic American Food”, John T Edge, July, 4, 2005)
“I love you as New Englanders love pie!” (Source: Sonnets to a Red Haired Lady, Don Marquis, 1952)
”It’s apple pies that make the menfolks’ mouths water. Pies made from apples like these.” (The Queen in Snow White)
“And the great American dessert is…pie.” (Source: “Etiquette”, Emily Post, 1937 ed)
“The Battle of the Century” (MGM, 1927) featured the biggest pie fight in movie history using 3,000 cream pies from the Los Angeles Pie Company. (Source: “Pie: A Global History”, Janet Clarkson, 2009)
“If you can hold your hand in the heated oven while you can count twenty, the oven has just the proper temperature…” (Source: “White House Cookbook”, 1898)
Ragan’s Nomenclature of the Apple lists over 17,000 different apple names. (Source: Ragan, 1905)
The Brogdale Horticultural Trust in Kent, England has over 2,400 varieties of apples in it’s National Fruit Collection. (Source: Wikepedia)
“According to tradition, Yalemen were served apple pie for supper every evening for 100 years.” (Source: “The Food Book”, James Trager, 1970)
Thoreau’s favorite apple? “–sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.” (Wild Apples: Henry David Thoreau, The Atlantic, Nov 1862)
“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.“ (Source: Jane Austen: Letter to Cassandra, October 17, 1815)
“Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes.” Earliest mention of a fruit pie in print, is from Robert Green’s Arcadia (1590). (Source: Oxford Reference)
“If you wish to make an Apple Pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” (Source: Carl Sagan, Cosmos)
Sumner, WA is the (self-proclaimed) “Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World”. (Source: rhubarbpiecapital.com)
“We resort, frankly to pies, which is a comedy staple that’s gone back, I guess, to since the first pie was ever baked.” (Johnny Carson)
“Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; pie is good enough for anybody.” (Source: Main Street, Upton Sinclair, 1920)