Pie a la Mode
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| Type | Pie |
|---|---|
| Course | Dessert |
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | Minnesota |
| Creator | John Gieriet of the Hotel La Perl |
| Main ingredients | Pie, ice cream |
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Pie à la Mode is pie served with a scoop of ice cream.
Pie à la Mode was first invented and named by John Gieriet in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1885. Over five decades later, in 1936, an erroneous claim was made that Pie à la Mode was first invented at the Cambridge Hotel in Cambridge, Washington County, New York, in the 1890s.
The claim is that while visiting the hotel, Professor Charles Watson Townsend ordered a slice of apple pie with ice cream. When asked by another guest what he called the dish, he replied it had no name. The guest, Mrs. Berry Hall, named it Pie à la Mode. Professor Townsend subsequently ordered it by that name every day during his stay. When he later ordered it by that name at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York City, the waiter answered that he had never heard of it. Prof. Townsend chastised the waiter by stating:
Do you mean to tell me that so famous an eating place as Delmonico's has never heard of Pie à la Mode, when the Hotel Cambridge, up in the village of Cambridge, NY serves it every day? Call the manager at once, I demand as good serve [sic] here as I get in Cambridge.
The manager, when called by the waiter, declared "Delmonico's never intends that any other shall get ahead of it... Forthwith, pie à la mode will be featured on the menu every day". A reporter for the New York Sun newspaper overheard the disturbance and wrote an article about it the next day. Soon, Pie à la Mode became a standard on menus around the United States.
When Charles Watson Townsend, died on May 20, 1936, a controversy developed as to who really invented Pie à la Mode. The New York Times reported that “Pie à la Mode” was first invented by Townsend at the Cambridge Hotel in Cambridge, New York in the late 1800s. It was later reported by several sources that Townsend ordered pie and ice cream at the Cambridge Hotel in 1896, and thus invented the dessert. The legend also states that a reporter from The Sun newspaper in New York overheard a conversation between the manager of Delmonico's Restaurant and Charles Townsend. The reporter was said to have written about the incident in the very next issue of The Sun.
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