Sweet Land of Liberty

Anastopoulo Rossi Anastopoulo

Description

A delicious and delightful narrative history of pie in America, from the colonial era through the civil rights movement and beyond From the pumpkin pie gracing the Thanksgiving table to the apple pie at the Fourth of July picnic, nearly every American shares a certain nostalgia for a simple circle of crust and filling. But America's history with pie has not always been so sweet. After all, it was a slice of cherry pie at the Woolworth's lunch counter on a cool February afternoon that helped to spark the Greensboro sit-ins and ignited a wave of anti-segregation protests across the South during the civil rights movement. Molasses pie, meanwhile, captures the legacies of racial trauma and oppression passed down from America's history of slavery, and Jell-O pie exemplifies the pressures and contradictions of gender roles in an evolving modern society. We all know the warm comfort of the so-called "All-American" apple pie . . . but just how did pie become the symbol of a nation? In Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies, food writer Rossi Anastopoulo cracks open our relationship to pie with wit and good humor. For centuries, pie has been a malleable icon, co-opted for new social and political purposes. Here, Anastopoulo traces the pies woven into our history, following the evolution of our country across centuries of innovation and change. With corresponding recipes for each chapter and sidebars of quirky facts throughout, Sweet Land of Liberty is an entertaining, informative, and utterly charming food history for bakers, dessert lovers, and history aficionados alike. Ultimately, the story of pie is the story of America itself, and it's time to dig in.

Sujets

• Desserts
• Histoire
• History of the Americas
• Cooking

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647003050
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright 2022 Rossi Anastopoulo
Illustrations by Jenice Kim
Cover and cover 2022 Abrams
Published in 2022 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Chapter Six has been adapted from the author s article The Pie Engineer Who Designed a Dessert for the Jazz Age, first published by Atlas Obscura on March 24, 2020.
Chapter Nine has been adapted from the author s article The Radical Pie That Fueled a Nation, first published by TASTE on November 13, 2018.
Chapter Twelve has been adapted from the author s article Why Apple Pie Isn t So American After All, first published by Food52 on October 8, 2021.
Recipe for Karo Pecan Pie courtesy of ACH
Recipe for Tofu Cream Pie reprinted with permission from Pie Any Means Necessary: The Biotic Baking Brigade Cookbook (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 108.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022933714
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5487-6 eISBN: 978-1-64700-305-0
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address below.
Abrams Press is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For my yiayias. To my Yiayia Harriet, whose pies started this all. And my Yiayia Rosie, who taught me to meet everything with a laugh .
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The majority of this book was written on the ancestral homelands of the Tongva people, who were enslaved, assimilated, and forcibly removed through colonization. I honor their right to this land and pay my respects to generations past, present, and future.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
R ECIPE FOR A LL -B UTTER P IE C RUST
CHAPTER ONE: A PPLE P IE
R ECIPE FOR A B UTTERED A PPLE P IE
C HEDDAR A PPLE P IE
CHAPTER TWO: P UMPKIN P IE
R ECIPE FOR M APLE P UMPKIN P UDDING
CHAPTER THREE: M OLASSES P IE
R ECIPE FOR M OLASSES P IE
CHAPTER FOUR: S WEET P OTATO P IE
R ECIPE FOR A BBY F ISHER S S WEET P OTATO P IE
CHAPTER FIVE: P ECAN P IE
R ECIPE FOR K ARO P ECAN P IE
D ERBY P IE
CHAPTER SIX: C HIFFON P IE
R ECIPE FOR L EMON C HIFFON P IE
K EY L IME P IE
CHAPTER SEVEN: M OCK A PPLE P IE
R ECIPE FOR R ITZ M OCK A PPLE P IE
I NDIANA S UGAR P IE
CHAPTER EIGHT: J ELL -O P IE
R ECIPE FOR J ELL -O C OFFEE N C HOCOLATE C REAM P IE
CHAPTER NINE: B EAN P IE
R ECIPE FOR B EAN P IE
CHAPTER TEN: Q UICHE
R ECIPE FOR Q UICHE L ORRAINE
CHAPTER ELEVEN: T OFU C REAM P IE
R ECIPE FOR T OFU C REAM P IE
C HOCOLATE H AUPIA P IE
CHAPTER TWELVE: R EVISITING A PPLE P IE
R ECIPE FOR A KIM S A PPLE P IE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
Index of Searchable Terms
INTRODUCTION
On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair Jr. entered the F. W. Woolworth s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, along with several of his friends, took a seat at the counter, and ordered coffee and a slice of cherry pie.
Woolworth s was a popular lunch destination in Greensboro, a place where you could go for a quick burger or sandwich, maybe a cup of coffee with a slice of pie on the side. The interior was basic but comfortable-a row of metal-backed stools lined a long counter littered with sugar canisters and salt and pepper shakers, behind which servers in paper hats took orders and refilled coffee cups.
It was the sort of democratic spot that served a large cross-section of the town s population, from local lawyers in suits to thrifty college students from nearby UNC Greensboro.
There was one exception to this clientele, however. Woolworth s did not serve Black customers.
Ezell Blair and his three friends, all of whom were Black, knew this when they entered Woolworth s that winter day. As freshmen at the local North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, they were accustomed to the strict racial codes that governed Greensboro, dictating where they could eat and shop and live. Therefore, unlike all other patrons, their trip to the Woolworth s lunch counter that day was meticulously planned.
Inspired by nonviolent protest, including a television program he had previously watched about Mahatma Gandhi, Blair had joined his friends in organizing a deliberate civil rights protest by staging a sit-in at the all-white Woolworth s lunch counter. The tactic-which had already been employed several times in lunch counters throughout the South-was decided after the group dared each other to do it during a campus bull session. Determined to be organized and disciplined, the students planned their approach deliberately, plotting their route to ensure success.
First, the group stopped at a nearby store owned by white businessman Ralph Johns, a social activist who supported the NAACP and was sympathetic to their cause. Next, the four young men visited the Woolworth s five-and-dime store, where they purchased several items and carefully saved their receipts. Finally, they took their seats at the Woolworth s lunch counter and politely placed their orders, with Ezell Blair Jr. requesting coffee and cherry pie.
It seems no coincidence that Blair ordered pie during this historic moment. The dish was a staple of Southern diners and lunch counters, part of the distinctly American cuisine such establishments served, and it could be found in similar lunch spots across the region. Pie was a familiar order. It was also deeply and traditionally American-a direct product of the United States. It seemed that if a Black American could eat pie-this symbol of American innovation and identity-at a lunch counter in North Carolina or anywhere else in the South, he or she might be considered just as equal an American citizen as anyone else.
Seated calmly at the lunch counter, the four men were immediately denied service. Unfazed, they remained, refusing to be denied. Blair waited for his slice of pie.
Unlike white Woolworth s patrons, he didn t receive it.
And thus, with one order, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond sparked a wave of social protest that ignited throughout the region. The next day, more students from North Carolina A T arrived at Woolworth s to protest alongside the four men. Two days later, Black protesters were seated in sixty-three of the restaurant s sixty-six seats, with employees occupying the remaining three. The protest rippled out beyond Greensboro to Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Durham, and eventually as far away as Jackson, Mississippi.
While pie was ordered by civil rights activists in sit-ins throughout the 60s, it played a different role in these protests for white people intent on opposing the fight for desegregation. For Black customers and protestors at lunch counters, being served pie was a symbol of equality, but segregationists instead turned the dish into a weapon of division. In many instances, the white reaction to Black protesters became violent, and when this happened, they often pelted activists with food and smeared them with pie.
Ann Moody, a participant in a sit-in at a Jackson, Mississippi, Woolworth s in which angry white high school students began violently attacking the protesters, recalled: We bowed our heads [to pray], and all hell broke loose. The mob started smearing us with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies, and everything on the counter. In these instances, pie became politicized and racially charged. Now, transformed into an object used for intimidation and power, it was a weapon for those aiming to preserve the status quo.
In these lunch counter settings-battlegrounds over which some of the fiercest wars of the Civil Rights Movement were waged-control over pie became a metaphor for racial victory. For Black Americans, being served pie represented a win for equality and justice; meanwhile, white Americans sought to reclaim the dish by using it as a tool in physical assaults. Underlying this struggle is the fact that-like much of the food prepared at these Southern lunch counters-the pie being served was a descendant of both Black and white culinary influences.
The segregationists violent efforts were to no avail. Six months after the original Greensboro Four calmly took a seat at the all-white lunch counter, Woolworth s officially desegregated.
And when, over a decade after he had first placed his fateful order at the Greensboro Woolworth s lunch counter, Ezell Blair (by then known as Jibreel Khazan after he joined the Islamic Center of New England and changed his name in 1968) returned to the same Woolworth s for a reunion with the three other men alongside whom he had shaped history, the Greensboro Daily News proclaimed, First Sit-In Participant Finally Gets Cherry Pie.
And with one slice, victory had finally been achieved. *
PIE IS, NEEDLESS to say, not the most natural medium through which to navigate American history. I ve received more than enough curious looks when explaining the premise of this book to confirm this (although I relish the opportunity to be an obsessed pie lady, as many people now seem to view me).
The idea that food can be a lens through which to examine issues of race, class, and gender in our society is not a new one, or even a particularly radical one. I am far from the first person to step into such deep and rich waters, and it thrills me that I will not even come close to being the last.
But though food as a medium for social history is not a novel concept, using pie to do so certainly is. * Served everywhere from greasy-spoon diners to holiday tables to hipster bakeries, it s a dish so common that it s easy to overlook its power. Though it may seem mundane, pie s broad exposure means that, in a way, this humble dish is a t