By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
The modern slogan “a new year, a new you” typically refers to the popular resolution to be healthier, including warding off junk food like sweets. After a holiday season full of treats like the gamut of pies, many people are ready for a return to “normal”.
While pies are a staple figure at the holiday table, its not just their delicious flavors that keeps them favorable, but the traditions behind why we include them in our menus are equally important.
A Toledo Pie Company delivery truck—the company provided pies to numerous restaurants around the city. This postcard image belongs to the Toledo-Lucas Public Library and the digital copy is found on the Ohio Memory Project website.
Tastes do change, but there are a certain set of “classic” options and also regional favorites.
In Tiffin and Seneca County, these choices included pies of both the sweet and savory kind, particularly rhubarb pie, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie and chicken pot pie.
Chicken Pie was a staple at the Ideal Dairy Lunch at 40 South Washington St., an “all home-cooking” restaurant in town in the early 1900s.
Pies were such as staple food because they were extremely versatile and the crust served as a container, especially for the working class who “packed” their lunch.
Chicken (pot) pie, like many other similar “pies,” was considered a leftover dish to our ancestors. As winter wore on and the fresh and canned ingredients continually dwindled, meat pies were a way to beef up (or chicken up) an empty pantry.
A 1910 Thanksgiving menu for the Chittenden Hotel in Columbus lists mince pie and pumpkin pie as the desserts.
“If a family was poor or working class, they ate mutton from old sheep and the beef from dairy cows. Families from the higher classes who owned land and hunting rights were able to eat pies made from fresh game and fish. The wealthiest, high-class people ate their pies made from pigeons they specifically raised to provide meat during the winter,” explains the University of Wyoming.
While adding the word “pie” to the word chicken seems like a misnomer, the word mincemeat (pie) actually is one, as modern versions contain currants and apples spiced with nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. One local author claimed that Tiffinites of English (British) backgrounds enjoyed mincemeat pie at Thanksgiving and there could be some truth to this opinion as mincemeat pie was sometimes served at English kings’ coronations.
To the common folk, it became a New Year’s Eve good luck charm. It was typically made on the last Sunday of Advent, stirred clockwise only (for good fortune and health) by each member of the family while making a wish, and eaten every day from Christmas Eve through Jan. 5 (the traditional 12 Days of Christmas).
Michael Mortimer describes, “a warm mince pie would keep you happy as the storms raged outside the window”.
The more popular holiday favorite among many Americans, including Ohioans, but still a very seasoned (both old and spiced) is the classic pumpkin pie.
In the past, pumpkin pie was a favorite throughout the entire autumn season.
In the 1927 Calvertana yearbook, its mentioned that the junior class served pumpkin pie at its Hallowe’en party. Tiffin University likewise served pumpkin pie along with cider and donuts at its Halloween party in the mid-1930s.
Pumpkin pie, along with sausage, was even thought of as a staple food for teachers in Seneca County at one time as it was given as a bonus with their salaries.
A group of people pose with slices of pie (some look like they can’t wait to eat it). This photo belongs to the Columbus College of Art and Design and has been digitized on the Ohio Memory Project, to which the Seneca County Digital Library belongs.
Pumpkin is, after all, a native plant in North America. Early settlers found many ways to make it. The precursor to pumpkin pie as we know it was taking a hollowed-out pumpkin and cooking a custard inside of it directly over an open fire.
After a cold football game on Thanksgiving Day 1919, the Junior Home football team was treated by its opponent, Maumee High School, to a holiday dinner of ham sandwiches, pickles, donuts and pumpkin pie.
The best part of eating pie, though, is the company with whom you are eating it or the occasion on which it’s being served.
The Tiffin Woman’s Club proclaims in one of its annual programs digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library that “sharing a piece of pie and a cup of coffee” was one of its members most favorite activities. During the 1960s, the club’s Civic Department even had a “Coffee and Pie Chairman.”
Schools in the area made a pie social one of its main social events of the year. These were like a Christmas program on … sugar. Following the children’s “recitations, dialogues, plays and songs,” a boxed lunch was served which included a pie auction for dessert. The money raised help off-set the purchase of library books, art supplies, maps, and other materials the school needed.
Rhubarb Pie seemed to be the grand finale of the pie season, being served around graduation.
“Back in the day when they ate nothing but preserved fruits for months and then you come into spring and rhubarb is coming up out of the ground, it’s a signal of rebirth,” recounts Lindsey Hollenbaugh.
The Junior Home even made a school song called Rhubarb Pie that was sang at the Dad Kernan memorial dinner. It goes, “All we get to eat are beans and peas. But if I die, I will not cry, ‘cause all we get to eat is Rhubarb Pie. Some like it hot, some like it cold, all we get to eat is Rhubarb Pie”.
Works cited:
Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33669
Barksdale, Nate. “The History of Pumpkin Pie.” Nov. 21, 2014. https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-pumpkin-pie
Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316
Calvert High School. Calvertana 1927. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/4777
Hollenbaugh, Lindsey. “Uncovering Pie’s Deep History in New England Culture.” Nov. 10, 2015. Berkshire Eagle. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_and_culture/food/uncovering-pies-deep-history-in-new-england-culture/article_d1eb5cae-d3ec-5474-9641-e9a9523a844c.html
Junior Homekid. August 1997. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/49575
Junior Homekid. December 1995. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/48800
Iannantuono, Dawn. History of 155 Parkway. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53274
Mortimer, Michael. “The History of Mince Pies.” Dec. 14, 2016. Walker’s Shortbread. https://www.walkersshortbread.com/the-history-of-mince-pies/#:~:text=Mince%20pies%20were%20first%20served,curing%2C%20smoking%20or%20drying%20it.
Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History and Families”. 1998. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319
Tiffin University. “Tystenac 1936-1937”. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/46145
Tiffin Columbian High School. Columhi 1914. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/24858
Terrell, Ellen. “A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America.” Nov. 20, 2017. Library of Congress Blogs. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2017/11/a-brief-history-of-pumpkin-pie-in-america/
University of Wyoming. “Savory Pot Pie.” https://uwyoextension.org/uwnutrition/newsletters/savory-pot-pie/