Treat of the Week: A Beautiful Boston Cream Pie

Why is this delightful dessert called a pie when, in reality, it’s a cake? No one is quite sure, but there are two reasonable explanations. To begin with, this dessert is said to have originated at Boston’s Parker House Hotel, the creation of French Chef M. Sanzian in 1856. Some say that, in the mid-Nineteenth Century, pie tins were more readily available than cake tins, and so the confection was christened as a pie.


Personally, I don’t buy that. Cakes, in a traditional round shape, have been around for centuries. And, those cakes had to have come out of some kind of mold or tin. So, I don’t think that’s a good answer.

Another theory is that the Boston Cream Pie is a reinterpretation of an Early American dessert known as “Pudding-cake Pie” and that the word “pie” remained attached to the later version.

Regardless of its name, it’s wonderful stuff. After all, a pie by any other name, etc…

A fluffy, golden, round cake is split down the middle and filled with a lovely pastry cream (crème pâtissière) or custard. The whole cake is then glazed with chocolate ganache and served in wedges.

That’s another argument some use for the name “pie.” I’ve read that it’s called a pie because it’s sliced in wedges like a pie. However, I refute this, too. In what other logical manner would you serve a round cake?

My mother treated us to a Boston Cream Pie this weekend and, after devouring as much as we wanted, we discussed why it’s called a “pie.” We couldn’t find an answer. But, we didn’t care. Once you’ve had a bite of this wondrous treat, all is right in the world.