OP: Pie Marches On

Patterson Publishing Company, Chicago, 1939. Hardcover. Very Good in Fair jacket. First printing.

Here is perhaps the most famous⁠—and least seen⁠—book on pies and pie baking ever published. 

Very little is known about its author, Monroe Boston Strause. He was born in California, and, while still in his teens, he went to work in an uncle’s bakery and totally mastered the craft. Consumed by his fascination with pies, he invented literally dozens of highly inspired varieties and taught and wrote about them in the pages of American Restaurant Magazine and other professional publications. 

Although Strause made every sort of pie, he was best known and widely lauded for his invention of the variety we now call “chiffon”⁠—light, airy fillings, tempting appearance, and excellent repositories of flavor. He was known for his meticulousness and his exact recording of ingredients, proportions, and procedures. He even developed the graham cracker crust, now almost universal for softer, lighter fillings. 

This remarkable collection contains highly detailed recipes for many dozens of pies including show-stoppers like malted milk cream, grape souffle, black bottom chiffon, lemon sponge, and, even that not-a-pie, Boston cream.

The word “bible” is far overused, but this is truly the last word: fiercely detailed, insistent on precision, and packed with information about the underlying science. The chapter devoted to rhubarb pie runs seven pages, including recipes for just a single pie or larger batches up to a dozen or fourteen. 

The voice is distinctly Strause’s own: “I just recently dropped into a well-known eating establishment in New York, and there in the bakery department the bakers were busy making banana cream pies.” They were doing it all wrong, he says, explaining with care that if you followed their procedure, “nothing you can do will keep the bananas from turning dark.” And he then offers a correction. 

Although there was a small hard-to-find edition in 1951 from a professional publisher, Ahrens, our copy is Strause’s original 1939 first printing. It is in Very Good condition⁠ save for a few spots of soiling and creasing—most examples of which appear to be a manufacturing error. The extremely scarce dust jacket⁠ is present, though missing a fist-sized chunk off the rear panel and previously repaired in many spots with scotch tape.