1. The history of pies may go back as far as the ancient Egyptians who used bread dough to enclose a tasty filling around 8,000 years ago.
2. The old term for the pastry around a pie filling was a coffyn or coffin.
3. There was a saying in 16th-century England, “If it’s good, ’tis better in a Coffyn.”
4. Technically, a pie should be enclosed in pastry, not just have a pastry lid.
5. The ancient Romans used a pastry crust to keep ingredients fresh, then as a baking dish. The cooked pastry was usually then thrown away.
6. In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus two princes are baked in a pie and fed to their mother.
7. The world record for eating apple pies is 4.375 three-pound pies in eight minutes, set by the world’s leading competitive eater Joey Chestnut in 2013.
8. Joey Chestnut also holds the records for meat pies and boysenberry pies…
9. …but Matt Stonie has the record for pumpkin pies and Sonya Thomas has the record for mince pies (46 in 10 minutes, set in Somerset in 2006).
10. The earliest known reference to the slapstick act of slapping a custard pie in someone’s face was in 1915. This was first called “pieing” in 1975.