Cake vs. Pie: the Debacle [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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The good was Jezebel's Cake vs. Pie vote-off this past month. The bad is that the ultimate winner was cheesecake. I don't know about you, but I'm not certain that cheesecake is a pie. But I shall leave it for you to decide...

[Poll #1551126]

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There are 35 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

But it is delicious.

Cheesecake may be some kind of tart in some circumstances, but it is most certainly neither a pie nor a proper cake.

My take is if it has a crust, it's pie. Most of the cheesecake I've had used a graham-cracker crumb crust, so that would qualify. If there's no crust, I suppose it would be a pudding, not a cake since cake has baking soda and flour in it to make it airy and light, not a homogeneous gel like cheesecake has. But nothing says food has to be logical.

I vote for pie. It's a flourless liquid, baked to a custard in a crumb crust... so the same concept as, say, a Key lime pie.

Argh, LJ ate my comment! :(

Basically, my thinking goes like this: Cheesecake has cake in its name. It is presented like cake: with extra adornments and decorations, fussy, fancy, and often pretentious. But it has a crust, like pie! It is served in one tier, like pie! BUT! Etc. etc.

So much for my prediction about apple, huh?

Apple made it into the top four, so it was a strong candidate to bet on; but it lost out in the semi-finals to cheesecake.

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How can it be pie? It has no lid. It's only pie in the weebl and bob any-desert-I-like-is-pie sense.

Gold star to you for citing weebl and bob as relevant authorities! I approve!

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I have a similar dilemma with Boston cream pie.

It seems to me to be a great deal like quiche, which I don't think of as a type of pie or cake.

Edited Date: 2010-04-14 05:14 pm (UTC)

This is interesting! I /do/ think of quiche as a type of pie.. at its heart it's a savory custard pie.

I would definitely not have thought cheesecake would win the pie category over such fine fruit pies as blueberry or apple, though.

And leaving aside the whole question of meat pies, which are turnovers, which are *sort of* pie...

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Thinking about it a bit more, my instinct is that if it can be made without a crust and still stand up on the plate, it's not a pie. So chicken pot pie, which requires the crust to hold together, I think of as pie, but quiche, which can hold together through its own coherence and consistency even without a crust, isn't.

I have no good reason to think my feelings on this are correct, mind. ;)

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But a turnover is a pasty, not a pie! And pork pies are made of pastry which stands up by itself.

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Cheesecake is cheesecake. Pie and cake have to be baked; not all cheesecakes are baked.

Pie is primarily savoury anyway. *g* Ask Mrs Miggins.

Truly, you are now the spiritual leader of the Great Pie Debate. ;)

I haven't felt enthused enough to organize a pie-off here since everyone (except Adam) agrees with me. ("Top crust only? What the hell kind of pie is that?") I need to find some olde worlde diaspora. Otherwise it would just be sitting around and eating a bunch of pie.)

Absolutely agree with the 'top crust isn't enough' standpoint -- as my wife has just observed, "It's just a casserole with a lid on it." It's only because so many pubs and restaurants (and Fray Bentos) disagree that I've grudgingly come to include top-crust-only pies in my, well, pie chart. ;)

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The pie-off arbitration committee grudgingly compromised on a 60% pastry coverage rule to differentiate true pies from false pies to avoid splitting on national lines while still recognizing the validity of the lattice.

I'm a bottom cruster, myself. Key lime pie? HELL YES.

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I think 60 per cent is a reasonable compromise. Not sure about your preference, though -- I might damage my teeth on the keys.

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I once went to a pub who offered on their menu an 'Individual boeuf bourgignon with puff pastry crouton' which was a beefy casserole served in a dish with a layer of puff pastry rolled over the top and baked until puffy. I liked that pub.

Just bottom crust - tart.
Top and bottom crust - pie.
Just top crust - see above crouton based description...

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My admittedly idiosyncratic definition of a pie includes pastry, of which cheesecake has none, meaning it is not a pie. I believe that, like the easily-resolved Jaffa Cake debate, there is some clue to the cheesecake's nature in its name. :)

Pies are supposed to have pastry (preferably on top as well as the bottom, otherwise it's encroaching on the territory of the tart). I'm not convinced that the biscuit-crumb base of a cheesecake is sufficiently pastrylike to qualify it for piehood. I therefore voted "cake", which can apply to pretty much any solid substance.

Pies have pastry tops, cakes don't. If a cheesecake is anything (other than a cheesecake, it's a flan.

Or a Tart.

It's a custard pie, like pumpkin pie. I'm going on preparation method for that vote. You make the shell, you pour the custard in, you bake it.

I am not convinced by the "but it isn't pastry" or "there's no top crust" arguments. There's no top crust on a pumpkin pie, and even on fruit pies it's optional (it's so not-structurally important that people do crazy decorative things with the top crust on a pie all the time). And crumb crusts are an absolutely acceptable variation on pie crust lining, especially for custard pies: I have never seen a peanut butter pie or a chocolate mousse pie made of pastry, for example.

I think to be a cake you have be a little breadlike, and cheesecakes are not at all so.

so much heresy!

http://isitpie.com/

ive been contemplating it was about time for another pie off. I was going to discuss it with billy this weekend. What with us being the 2 pie masters left in London iirc.

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I'm always in favor of pie-eating opportunities.

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The DaveNLet gestalt entity have been chastised for their leaving of Olde Londone Towne (with them being the last winner and all).

Discussions will be had.

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It's more a pie than a cake, and more neither than both.

That's clear, isn't it?

I think we should create a new name for cheesecake, a name which does not include cheese OR cake.

Many of the early cheesecake recipes don't have cheese, but that doesn't stop us calling it cheesecake. It's served for afternoon tea where I come from and that makes it a cake according to my family. Also, it seldom uses the same pastry as pie and seldom uses pastry in the same way as pie. And right now I'm craving a good Central Europeaen baked lemon cheesecake and it's all your fult.

Samuel Johnson: "A pie is anything baked in a crust."

Not a pie unless it has crust below and at least 60% crust above. So a thick lattice will do, but a thin lattice is a tart.

Not cake. Cakes are crumbly or dense but in any way are a flour and fat concoction.

Actually, more sort of pudding.

Now I'm starting to feel like I don't care any more... In fact, starting to feel that I'm suddenly FREE! :)

Wow...I voted for neither. Having been raised in the Southern U.S. (granted, a more urban than rural area), I've never really heard the term "tart" used at all - except in Alice in Wonderland. It's so refreshing to get a good British definition of these things. :)

Oh, and also - in my entire life - I've only been served pie with a "top crust" about 10% of the time. Most of the pies my Mom made were either more pudding and/or tart-like (pumpkin, coconut, buttermilk, key lime) - or less frequently, cobblers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobbler_(food) for the distinction between U.S. and British definitions).

However it should be classified, I thank you all for your insight - and especially Shana who (along with my recent discovery of Kitchen Nightmares) has given me great insight into foodism - which I'd never even heard of 6 months ago. :)

A cheesecake is a cake by name - which is not a bad way to classify it - but in practical terms it's a biscuit topped with a mousse, so it's more like a marshmallow teacake than a regular cake or pie. Lemon meringue pie, like Key lime pie, has a pastry base and sides, so it's more pie-like. Trifle is another hybrid dessert with similar problems to cheesecake.

I'm amazed at all the 'pie must have a top crust' responses! Where does that leave pumpkin, lemon meringue, coconut cream, key lime? What about all the fruit pies that can be made with a crumb topping but a pastry bottom? To my mind, pie has to involve *some* pastry (which lets out cheesecake from the category) but I'm quite happy for it to be only underneath the filling.

October