Shoo Fly Pie

 The holidays are a time of sharing stories of the past—“Remember when …”. They’re also about eating food that we get only at this time of year. But this year, many of us won’t be able to gather as families, and we will have to create new traditions. We will make some of the holiday recipes—the cookies and cakes, the soups, and savory dishes, and the smells of baking and cooking will warm our hearts and inspire wishful thinking.

 

This is my story of shoo fly pie. May it spur you to remember one of your own. 

 

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I made two shoo fly pies today. They were a favorite of my wife Evelyn before she died. Every Christmas season, she would bake a variety of holiday cookies and shoo fly pie. Holiday foods carry extra meaning, although if you’re grieving, they also carry extra sorrow, so for a number of years I didn’t make the pies. I found the recipe in her cooking file, and used the pastry cutter she used to make the crust.

 

Shoo fly pie is made with molasses, which is important to know if you don’t like the taste of molasses, which I can’t understand. It’s an odd concoction because it’s a cake that is baked in a pie crust, not that this detail bothers anyone. It’s also intensely good, if you like molasses. If you want it stronger, try blackstrap variety.

 

Ev learned how to make it from her mother Marjorie. Marjorie grew up in Arizona, so I suspect she learned to make the shoo fly because of husband Stan, who grew up with it in Pennsylvania. Marjorie’s recipe makes four pies. I cut the recipe down to make two, and will give pieces away to friends. Why Marjorie would make four pies at a time is beyond me. Their family wasn’t that large. 

 

Marjorie always hoped that at least one of the pies would have a wet bottom, which meant there was a thin layer of molasses on the bottom, but this was happenstance. After decades of making the pies, Marjorie said she couldn’t figure out why only a few turn out that way. If she knew, she’d make them all the time, which would have delighted Evelyn because she eagerly watched the first slice being taken out to see if it was wet. I wanted to make the pies this year to celebrate them, and remember how they welcomed me into the family and fed me pie.

 

Shoo fly pie was developed by the Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch meaning Deutsch, meaning Germans) in the 1880s. Apparently, they ate it for breakfast. The rumor is that putting the cake in a pie crust made it easier to carry, but why would they be in a hurry to go somewhere when they could linger and enjoy the shoo fly? Germans have a heritage of being busy, convinced that there is a lot of work they have to do to make the world neat and orderly, and it would be irresponsible not to use every hour of daylight that the good Lord gave them. The insides of the pie, at least in Marjorie’s recipe, is made with sugar, brown sugar, and molasses, in about equal portions, along with flour to hold it together. That’s a lot of sugar to start the day, but many of them were farmers and would burn that off by noon.

 

I’d consider shoo fly for breakfast if I also had scrapple. I learned about scrapple from Marjorie and Stan, too, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what scrapple was made of, knowing some of the things that my German ancestors ate, not wanting to waste any part of the animal. I guess they figured their digestive systems would extract what was nutritious and bypass the rest.

 

One day I asked Stan where it came from. He said, with a grin and eyes shining with humor, “Boil one pig’s head …” Basically it’s a ground mush of pork scrapes and trimmings with cornmeal added in. It was tasty, and peppery in the version we could find occasionally in Bay Area stores, and it provide a nice counterbalance to the pie. We’d slice the scrapple thin and fry it up crisp. At least it wasn’t haggis, which is part of Stan’s Scottish heritage, he being a MacNair. I have no desire to try haggis. It’s made by stuffing a sheep’s stomach with its heart, liver and lungs, and cooking it. I’m not fond of any of the ingredients, but lung is a deal breaker.

 

Stan grew up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania where the Deutsch/Dutch hung out. Down the street from his house lived little Jimmy Mitchener, who would go on to fame as a writer of 40 books like Tales of the South Pacific, which was made into a Broadway musical by Rogers and Hammerstein. Stan knew of him, but Jimmy was an orphan, and Stan’s parents wouldn’t let him play with him because of this. 

 

In 1946, Dinah Shore sang the Sammy Gallop song about the pie: “Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy / Makes your eyes light up, Your tummy say ‘Howdy.’” Apple pan dowdy is a dish from colonial times, and Abigail Adam’s favorite. I would be willing to taste that.

 

Why did Stan crave the inexpensive German food rather than the Scottish food of his heritage? Maybe the proper Scottish ingredients were harder to find, or more expensive, or perhaps his family wasn’t that keen about their Scottish roots? A traditional Scottish soup, Cullen Skink, requires haddock, and Black Pudding required some kind of animal blood, as well as the obligatory oatmeal. The Scots also like Clootie Dumplings, which first made me think of cooties (no), and then of coots (similar to ducks, so maybe), but it turns out that the clootie is the cloth that holds the pudding, made of oatmeal, currants, flour and suet, while it is boiled in water. 

 

One side of my family came from Germany and the other side came from Scotland, not that I know any stories about them because my family didn’t think they were important enough to share through the generations. Apparently, they were too busy carrying pie around to pick up a pen and write their stories down. 

 

Because of Stan’s Scottish heritage, I grew curious about that side of my family, and when Ev and I traveled through Scotland years ago, we spent extra time in the Highlands, and visited Iona, the holy isle that Stan loved, and where St. Columba once lived. John Muir, my nature saint, was also born in Scotland before his family moved to Wisconsin and lived near where I grew up. Muir went on to Yosemite, where he wrote about the transcendence and spirituality of nature, and where I would go to hike and be where he wrote the words that have long inspired me.

 

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So that’s my story about shoo fly pie. I wish I knew more. I can’t ask Evelyn, Marjorie, or Stan because they have all passed on. 

 

The stories we treasure are never about one person, but about a supporting web of relationships that connect us to each other, then, and for all time. Sometimes our favorite holiday traditions are not the ones we grew up with, but the ones we choose, and the people we care about the most are those we find along the way.

 

May your celebrations this year, in whatever form they take, bring you strength and hope. May your stories rekindle the memories of people you love. And may your dreams for the year ahead be filled with compassion and courage.