The Marriage of Ice Cream & Pie

Thanksgiving is just a couple weeks away. You can almost smell the turkey and the rest of the trimmings that go with the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Then there will be the traditional desserts. This means pie. Hopefully more than one pie. Pumpkin, pecan, apple…ah apple. The pie that goes so well with ice cream (we’ll throw cherry and blueberry on that list as well). The marriage of pie and ice cream is a delicious union of two desserts that stack up pretty well on their own but achieve a culinary nirvana when combined. Warm apple pie with a scoop of quality ice cream is one more one reason to count down the days before Thanksgiving.

The combination of pie and ice cream is known as Pie a la Mode. We got to wondering who came up with this creation. Turns out the history of Pie a la Mode is shrouded in some controversy.

It seems Pie a la Mode was first invented (if that’s the right word) by a man in Duluth, Minnesota back in 1885. However, in 1936, there was a claim that Pie a la Mode was first created at the Cambridge Hotel in Washington County, New York. According to the story, a man named Professor Townsend ordered a slice of apple pie with ice cream. Another guest asked if the dessert had a name. Upon hearing it did not, the guest dubbed the concoction Pie a la Mode. The professor later found himself eating at the now-historic Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City. When the professor tried to order Pie a la Mode for the dessert, the story goes that the waiter had never heard of Pie a la Mode. The waiter was soon chastised by the professor and the dessert eventually made its way onto the menu.

A few years later, Professor Townsend passed away and a reporter from Minnesota happened to read the professor’s obituary. The obit credited Townsend as the inventor of Pie a la Mode. The reporter set out to set the record straight on how Pie a la Mode was really invented at a restaurant in Duluth, Minnesota in 1885. The reporter’s story indicted that the restaurant in Duluth was serving blueberry pie with ice cream years before the professor ordered his apple pie with ice cream in New York.

There is also the story of how pie with ice cream was served at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. According to that tale, the French observed this culinary creation and came up with the term “a la Mode”. Apparently in France, a la Mode means “modern” or “fashionable”.

So there’s the story…sort of. No matter who really created Pie a la Mode, let’s just be thankfully some did. And this Thanksgiving make sure you’ve some great ice cream to go with that pie.