Scientific Pie
Yesterday my girls participated in the 5th Grade Science Fair.
It is a joy to have two daughters who share many of my interests…. they love to sew, they love to watch “Jane Eyre” and “Dial M for Murder” with me. And they also love to bake.
So when we were wading through ideas for the Science Fair, they were thrilled to come across food experiment ideas. And after excited discussion, they decided on the question: “Which fat makes the best pie?”
Well of course, this mama was supremely confident in the outcome…
My girls shared my bias since they’ve made pies with me ever since they were old enough to help in the kitchen.
Here was their hypothesis:
“We think that lard will make the best pie, because our Great-Grandmother, our Grandmother, and our Mother all make their pies with lard. Their pies are really good.”
To test our theory we made 6 pies together. 3 Banana cream pies – each using one of the pie fats and 3 pumpkin pies – again one of each pie fat.
The recipe was the same for each pie, the only change was the fat.
We took notes making each pie. The lard and the shortening were similarly easy to make. The butter was not easy to cut the cold fat into the flour. The butter was also more fiddly to work in the liquid and roll out the crust.
When all the pies were made, we invited some friends over for a blind taste test.
The girls gave each of our testers a slice of pie from each pie- A, B, and C and a test sheet. They rated each pie on a scale of 1-5, 5 being best. The girls decided the categories should be flakiness, flavor, looks, texture and strength.
When the results were calculated, I think my jaw dropped.
Guess what pie fat won?
I didn’t guess it that’s for sure.
SHORTENING.
While my favorite fat, lard, won on flakiness, the shortening pie was the hands down winner in every other category.
DOH!
The butter crust was a dismal last place.
The results were so surprising for me, I’d like to do more experiments… my own test kitchens to find my perfect pie crust.
But for now I’ll just have to serve myself up a slice of humble pie… made with shortening.
Wow! what a great science experiment! i usually use a store bought crust, because I’ve never been too sucessful making my own. i would use butter, and had all the troubles you mentioned but I thought it was me, not the fat! I need to do my own pie crust experiment now, and give some shortening and lard a try.
How timely a post…I have an apple pie in the oven right now. I tried an all butter crust once and it was terrible! I swore I would stick to my Grandma’s crust recipe from then on. Hers is half lard and half shortening so maybe it’s the best of both worlds? I think it’s pretty good.
After many different crust recipes my all time favorite is made with butter flavored shortening. I like the butter flavor better than the regular and you have to buy Crisco brand. Now I want some pie!
For health reasons I prefer not to use lard or vegetable shortening in any of my baking. One of the best pie crusts I ever sampled was made with oil (but it seemed to be tricky to make, rolling the dough between two pieces of waxed paper to facilitate handling). Unfortunately I have never been able to duplicate my friend’s excellent results. Now I resort to pressed graham cracker crusts…delicious, but not the same as a firm crust, of course.
How about adding an oil crust to your on-going crust trials?
Thanks!
Actually there is recent evidence that lard is not as unhealthy as previously thought. It is a fat and is certainly not healthy… but it is not nearly as unhealthy as shortening.
I have been using a recipe for years where it uses shortening, but also adding a little bit of butter!
Works for me.
What a great topic! Your girls are so cute :)
xo
summer
If my Grandmother was still with us I would ask her .She made the best pies. They were flaky and great tasting and pretty to look at! They had it all.
Leslie sure has some cute granddaughters!
We took a pie crust class from laura potter (the cupcake place in town) and she uses butter flavor crisco and keeps it in the freezer and takes it out just as she is making her crust. It is the best crust I’ve ever made. I have always thought lard was best but never wanted to use it. Good to know good old crisco was the winner. Your twins are darling.
Cute girls, Calli! It’s always fun to hear about your family. I’m glad we got to hang out on Saturday :)