Mark it with a... what?

Happy belated pi day!

In honor of this auspicious mathematical observance, I baked an apple pie last night (exhibit 1, above) at about 9 p.m. By all accounts, I am a good pie baker—pretty impressive, considering that this was the first apple pie I had made solo. Usually my mom does the actual baking and I just stand around and eat extra dough (and get my fingers swatted).

But I guess something of the art rubbed off in spite of the stinging knuckles. Ironically, except for chocolate and sometimes apple, I don’t even like pie. But I do like to bake. So, pi(e) day was a good excuse to a) bake pie and b) get my roommate to try it. She’s really picky.

That’s all beside the point. The point is, I made some pretty good pie. And just like my mother taught me, I marked it with… well, I didn’t mark it with a “B” (pattycakes, anyone?) but I did mark it.

When my mom bakes pies, she always marks them the same way. It looks something like this: right parenthesis, left parenthesis, and two sets of three chicken scratches. (Or, just look at the crudely approximated Paint illustration to the right. That’s what it looks like.)

That pattern is the proud pie stamp of my mother, my mother’s mother, and my mother’s mother’s mother. Apparently back in the day, women had their own special pie signature. That way, you knew who brought what to the potluck. (Okay, that part is speculation. But I feel like it can’t be far off the mark.)

I think of them as pie signatures. I suppose that isn’t their “official” name, but some serious Google searching failed to yield any real results on the matter. My label is as good as any. The only direct reference I could find to pie signatures was here in a discussion thread. According to this woman, the marking was a regional indicator, not individual. Maybe Eddyville, Iowa, was less competitive than Johnstown, Ohio.

On this site, the section “The Pie as a Styled Centerpiece” gives an interesting history to the art of decorating piecrust. It focuses on the medieval/industrial evolution of the image of pie, which doesn’t exactly apply to a discussion of American farm lore, but is interesting nonetheless. In fact, the whole article is an interesting (and thorough) exploration of the history of pie. If you are ever looking for pie history, looks like this is the place you should go.

I was also told that yesterday was “the real man’s Valentine’s Day,” and, properly celebrated, involved steak. Sorry, guys-- I can make a mean pie, but steak isn’t really my thing. ….