the.com/shoofly pie
Molasses pie so sweet it was invented to bribe flies away from the kitchen.
means A Pennsylvania Dutch pie made of a crumb-topped molasses or brown sugar filling, dense, sticky-sweet, and traditionally eaten for breakfast as much as dessert.
from The name almost certainly comes from the old kitchen gesture of waving flies off the cooling pie — 'shoo, fly' — a bit of practical advice turned into a label. It's Pennsylvania Dutch in origin, tied to molasses baking traditions brought over by German-speaking settlers, though the exact moment the pie got its name isn't documented, so the fly story is the best-attested explanation rather than a verified historical event.
- origin
- Pennsylvania Dutch, 1800s molasses surplus dessert
- name theory
- bakers literally shooed flies off cooling pies
- texture split
- wet-bottom or dry-bottom, a fierce regional debate
- no eggs needed
- originally a crumb cake, pie crust came later