Today, August 24, 2014, is National Peach Pie Day. A pie is a baked dish that is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. The first pies appeared around 9500 BC, in the Egyptian Neolithic period or New Stone Age. Ancient Greeks are believed to have originated pie pastry. Sometime before 2000 BC, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer. Ancient Greeks are believed to have originated pie pastry. In the plays of Aristophanes (5th century BC) there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. The 1st century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes that involve a pie case. Medieval cooks had restricted access to ovens but pies could be easily cooked over an open fire. The first reference to "pyes" as food items appeared in England as early as the 12th century. The Pilgrim fathers and early settlers brought their pie recipes with them to America, adapting to the ingredients and techniques available to them in the New World.
