Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wasn’t afraid to tackle any subject and make a few enemies along the way. Her position on American apple pie is one example. The Brits had pie right, Stanton said. They didn’t use a bottom crust, for it would inevitably become soggy. Her views on the subject were laid out in a collection of her writings:

“Mr. Gurney’s dig at our pie referred to the soggy undercrust so many of our American cooks persist in making. The English never have an undercrust to their pies, one of the few respects, it seems to me, in which English cooking, which is generally atrocious, is superior to our own, which also belongs in many respects to the atrocious order. The English put the fruit in a deep dish and simply spread a nice light crust over it. If there be women, or men either for the matter of that, in the United States who know how to make a crisp undercrust and bake it to the well-done point, let them produce the perfect American pie. But if they cannot accomplish this difficult feat, let us have done with our national raw, soaked undercrust of dough, which is why du=yspepsia has attacked one-half of our men, who will eat pie whether it is good, bad or indifferent.

“Though these lines were written in 1840, they still hold good to-day. Pie is still with us, and so is the abominable undercrust. All travelers can testify to
seeing some son of Adam at every railway station in America running for the cars with a great piece of pie in his hand, which to withstand such wear and tear must have an undercrust as tough as sole leather. Yet the prospective presidents of this great republic all eat it, and will to the end of time.”

From Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s writings, a free ebook online.

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