Page 189 - United States of Pie

rather murky history. In his 1972 classic, American Cookery,
James Beard claims that this pie “began appearing in cookbooks
around the turn of the century.” Despite his authority, I find

Beard’s claim suspect—and he didn’t cite any sources! Duncan
Hines (yes, that Duncan Hines, namesake of supermarket cake
mixes), a traveling salesman who made his name rating
restaurants for travelers in the era before interstate highways,
popularized the pie in the 1941 edition of his book, Adventures in
Good Cooking, in a review of Oklahoma City’s Dolores
Restaurant—it was one of their signature desserts. But Hines was

not the first to write about black bottom pie. In his 1939 book,
Pie Marches On, Monroe Boston Strause, “Pie King,” ingenious
self-promoter, and all-around immodest character, claims not
only to have invented the pie in the late 1920s but also to have
disseminated the recipe throughout the United States. From
where did Strause hail? Los Angeles, California, where he was a

consultant for the famous Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood.
Another Los Angeles hot spot, the late, lamented, and fabulous
Ambassador Hotel, which was home to the famous Cocoanut
Grove nightclub, also featured a version of the black bottom pie
as a menu staple. So many stories, but just one pie!
The earliest print reference to a black bottom pie appears in
1931, in the local Brownsville, Texas, newspaper. Page three

featured a recipe for a chilled pie with two fillings—a chocolate
pudding and a lemon pudding. Close, but not exactly the black
bottom pie of lore. But a 1933 article in a Van Nuys newspaper
(Van Nuys is a neighborhood in Los Angeles) contains a recipe
for a double-layered chocolate and vanilla custard pie, made with
egg whites stabilized with “Jelatine” and called the black bottom

pie. The recipe circulated around the West in the early ’30s,
appearing in bakery, grocery, and restaurant advertisements. In
Reno, Nevada, you could get a whole black bottom pie topped
with “Pure Whipped Cream” for a costly 29 cents back in 1932.
By the mid-’30s syndicated newspaper lifestyle columns
reporting on black bottom pie began circulating around the
country. Housewives began serving the pie at bridge games and

social functions. In 1936, the syndicated “Sister Mary” column