Pie à la Mode facts for kids
Apple Pie à la Mode
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| Type | Pie |
|---|---|
| Course | Dessert |
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | Minnesota |
| Created by | John Gieriet of the Hotel La Perl |
| Main ingredients | Pie, ice cream |
Pie à la Mode is a delicious dessert that's just a slice of pie served with ice cream on top! The name comes from a French phrase, à la mode, which means "in the current fashion" or "fashionable." You might hear this phrase used for other dishes too, like boeuf à la mode (beef à la mode).
Contents
The Story of Pie à la Mode
People have different ideas about where Pie à la Mode first came from. It's a fun mystery!
The New York Story
One popular story says that Pie à la Mode was invented in the 1890s at the Cambridge Hotel in Cambridge, New York.
Charles Townsend's Claim
The story goes that a man named Charles Watson Townsend was staying at the Cambridge Hotel. He ordered a slice of apple pie with ice cream. Another guest asked him what he called this new dish. Charles quickly said, "Pie à la Mode!" He liked it so much that he ordered it by that name every day during his visit.
Later, when he ordered "Pie à la Mode" at a famous restaurant called Delmonico's Restaurant in New York City, the waiter had never heard of it. Charles was surprised! He told the waiter that if a small hotel in Cambridge, NY, served it every day, then a famous place like Delmonico's should too. He even asked to speak to the manager!
The manager quickly said that Delmonico's would never let another place be ahead of them. He announced, "From now on, pie à la mode will be on the menu every day!" A reporter from New York Sun newspaper overheard this whole conversation. The next day, the reporter wrote an article about it. Soon, Pie à la Mode became a popular dessert all over the United States.
When Charles Watson Townsend passed away in 1936, people started talking about who really invented Pie à la Mode. The New York Times newspaper reported that Charles Townsend had invented it at the Cambridge Hotel.
The Minnesota Story
However, a reporter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper in Minnesota read Townsend's obituary. This reporter thought the New York Times was wrong! On May 23, 1936, the St. Paul newspaper published a story saying that Pie à la Mode was actually invented in Duluth, Minnesota, back in the 1880s.
John Gieriet's Invention
The Minnesota newspaper said that a restaurant in Duluth served ice cream with blueberry pie. This was more than ten years before Charles Townsend ordered his pie and ice cream in New York! This would mean Duluth is the true birthplace of Pie à la Mode.
The Hotel la Perl in Duluth had its grand opening menu published in the Duluth Daily Tribune newspaper on March 26, 1885. The menu showed that the hotel restaurant served both vanilla ice cream and blueberry pie.
The owner of the hotel was John Gieriet. He was born in Switzerland in 1829. He later moved to France and learned to speak French. In 1854, John moved to the United States. He even worked as the head of food service at the White House for Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan in the 1850s.
In 1885, the Gieriet family moved to Duluth. John bought a building called the Commercial Hotel and renamed it Hotel la Perl. He turned the saloon on the first floor into a restaurant and made the laundry room into a kitchen. On the Hotel la Perl's first day, John Gieriet served a fancy dinner. For dessert, he offered warm blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream. He called this popular treat "pie à la mode." People in Duluth in the 1880s sometimes mispronounced it as "pylie mode." The Hotel la Perl became very well-known under John's management. He ran the hotel until his wife became ill in 1886, and he sold it that August.
John Gieriet's Other Ideas
Pie à la Mode wasn't John Gieriet's only invention! He also received a patent in 1882 for a device that helped air move in train cars. In 1899, he got another patent for a type of fire escape. John Gieriet moved to New York City by 1910 and passed away there in 1912.
