Chiffon pie facts for kids

Lemon chiffon pie, a popular dessert in America, featured in the Ladies' Home Journal.

A chiffon pie is a super light and airy dessert. It has a special fluffy filling inside a pie crust. Imagine a cloud-like texture!

The filling is usually made by gently folding meringue (whipped egg whites and sugar) into a creamy mixture. This mixture often tastes like fruit curd, especially lemon. To make it light and airy, unflavored gelatin is added. This makes chiffon pies different from cream pies, which use whipped cream for lightness.

To make sure the pie is safe to eat, especially with egg whites, some recipes suggest heating the egg whites and sugar first. This is called a Swiss meringue. After the filling is ready, it's put into a pre-baked pie shell and chilled until firm. You can even make a pumpkin chiffon pie using this same method!

For a quicker version, some people use flavored gelatin mixes and ready-made whipped cream substitutes.

Who Invented the Chiffon Pie?

The chiffon pie was created in Los Angeles in 1926. The inventor was a man named Monroe Boston Strause. People knew him as the "Pie King" because he was so good at making pies!

Strause wasn't happy with the cream pies that existed back then. He had even gotten sick from a cornstarch pudding when he was a kid. So, he wanted to invent something better. His original recipe used beaten egg whites folded into a liquid thickened with cornstarch.

When his mother first saw the pie, she said it looked like chiffon. That's how it got its name!

New Features of the Chiffon Pie

Besides its new fluffy filling, the chiffon pie also brought some other cool ideas. It was often made with a dome-shaped top, which looked fancy. It also helped make the graham cracker crust very popular.

The chiffon pie became incredibly famous. Strause traveled a lot, sometimes up to 30,000 miles a year! He taught hotels and restaurants how to make his amazing new pie.