A Look at Pies Through History

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen. Who doesn't love pie? I mean, I like a lot of different pie. Well that's the beauty of it, right, there's a lot of different kinds. I'm not dogging anybody that doesn't like pie, but like you can get it's savory or sweet, or biscuit topped or with a buttercrust. It is one of those foods that has so much variety that there is kind of something for everyone. That also means though, that it's a massive topic. So before we even go in as a level set, this is not an exhaustive history of pie. We're just looking at some pie stuff in history, is how I like to think about it, because otherwise it would get really really it would become an entire series about pie, which sounds fun, but I think not that many people would actually want to hear um. So we are going to cover today the Bay Sick history of pie as we know it, and then we'll delve into the way that pie became a huge part of Western cooking, so much so that it is deeply linked in many ways to national identity. We're going to talk about a couple of the most popular pies, how they have changed over time. And we're also going to do one of my favorite things, which is talked about a bunch of recipes from historical cookbooks and kind of see how pies were perceived and presented and taught as a thing to make at various points. So you would like to grab a slice, get ready, because we're going to jump right in. One of the trickiest things about discussing the history of pie is nomenclature. A lot of things have been called pie or pie spelled p y e, and that takes place over centuries of recorded history. A lot of it most people today wouldn't even really recognize as pie. So as a food item, there's no one species, a thick moment of origin that will likely ever pinpoint. Yeah, there are a lot of a lot of uh, surveys of pie history that you'll read will comment that like, for a long time, if it wasn't bread, it was pie like with which we know it's not really indicative of the wide range of baked goods you can make. In the book, pie. A global history author Janet Clarkson suggests that the progression to putting filling inside of a dough shell might have gone like this. Someone first tried baking bread in a kiln after noticing that dough and clay had some similarities in their pre baked state. We've talked on the show before about bread being baked like flat in a fire, and that they transitioned over to this kiln approach. And they also then started wrapping meat inside of leaves when they cooked over an open flame to help retain the juices. And then there was likely this moment where the experiment was made to wrap the meat inside the dough to retain juices, and a law that would have been primitive pie. This seems like a pretty logical chain of events, So in terms of like theorizing that this may have happened this way makes all the sense on earth, but we can't conclusively substantiate those moments of inspiration that led to each of those steps. Yeah, it reminds me of when we talked about the origins of cheese and how there's a lot of maybe it could have worked that they may have accidentally fermented cheese or on purpose, we don't know. The first evidence we have of something that seems like a pie comes from ancient Egypt. They started mixing up honey based fillings to bake inside of a bread like grain based cake the States as far back as six thousand BC. There's also evidence of savory pie in Egypt as far back as two thousand b C. There's a recipe for a chicken pie was found on a tablet that's been dated back to that time. By the time of Ramps these the Seconds who ruled from thirteen oh four to twelve thirty seven b c e, the combination of honey with nuts and fruits baked into a bread dough was popular. We know this because it was depicted on the tomb walls of Ramsey's the Second and a lot of the pies that we're talking about here are kind of what we would call gallets, so they're relatively free form. The crust is sort of wrapped up around the sides uh to keep the food contents inside, but it doesn't really look like a perfectly formed rounded pie. In ancient Greece, there's mention of a pastry used as a shell for other foods in the work of Aristophanes. Aristophanes lived from four or forty six to three eighty six BC, so we know by that time there were pies of some sort there. There's also mentioned of the job of pastry specialists. That was a vocation that was different from Baker's, although the word pastry wouldn't be coined until much later. This involved specializing in a mix of flour and water to create a paste and then that would be wrapped around the meat for cooking. So we covered the oldest known cookbook, Diric Coquina on the show before, and we mentioned that it had a number of savory pies in it. And this Roman book, which is usually dated to the first century, is full of recipes, and because it's miscellaneous section is pretty heavy on pie instructions, it's fairly clear that savory pies at least had become standard at this point. We know that as the Romans had conquered the Greek Peninsula, Greek and Roman culture blended in a variety of ways, and it appears that pies were part of that intermingling and adoption. And in Rome, though the pies composition evolved, it considerably in terms of the fillings, the crust, was still pretty basic up to this point. The idea of a pie crust really had more to do with it being a vessel than it being edible. The idea was that it was a simple way to contain the real goods, which was the filling, not so much about the crust itself being eaten. The pastry around the food was a cooking vessel, a carrying case, and a way to keep the filling from going bad too quickly. The proportion of ingredients was aimed at creating a sturdy shell for all of these needs, not about making that shell delicious. No, if you've ever had a really hard and miserable bread, you know that it's not delicious, And that's kind of kind of where we're at here. But as a lot of things from the Roman Empire, the idea of pie quickly spread throughout Europe and beyond. So because of the ease of travel of a completely self contained food, pie meat its way not only over land but also on two ships. By the medieval period, what we might recognize as a meat pie was being made called bake meat. These were normally pies that had an animal protein as the primary filling, and green and so things like poultry, venison, pork, beef, lamb that was pre cooked and either sliced up into small pieces or ground or mashed into more of a paste. With the other ingredients that was things like egg, honey, dates, and pepper. And it's in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century that the word pie starts to appear in written language, specifically referring to a savory filling enclosed in a dough or pastry. There is a distinction, by the way between those two words. To be considered a pastry, there has to be fat in the dough. And how the word pie spelled as we mentioned earlier, early on with a y as in p y e, came to be used for this type of dishes not entirely certain. This is another thing that has a pretty common theory but we don't know, and that theory is that it borrows its name from the bird, the magpie. So just as that type of bird gathers various things to make a nest, a cook or baker would gather what they had into a crust to make a pie. Well before the thirteenth century, the Arab world had developed pastry, so it seems likely that as the Muslim Empire expanded in the six hundreds. The idea of a more delicate and delicious type of dough was encountered by other cultures that might have informed the evolution of the pie crust. Meat pies have long been part of Middle Eastern cooking, usually similar to the galets that we mentioned earlier. You have never had a Lebanese meat pie. You have not lived. Um, I'm thinking about them now and just drooling. So these still, the pies that we're talking about at this point in history would not have been the kind of pies you think of today. The crust was way more voluminous, still not the buttery, flaky delight that we enjoy in modern times. And this base crust also had the name of coffin. This sounds perhaps surprising or disturbing, but becomes less so when you consider that pie eyes were also not round at this point. They were usually shaped like long, almost squared off shapes, and the word coffin referred to a box or basket long before it had any funereal associations. Basically, people were making baking dishes out of dough and that had to be able to sit in an oven for hours, sometimes While it's possible that somebody may have nibbled at that, it wasn't something that most people of any means would actually eat. On occasion, the coffin crust would be used as a vessel for making a second dish that took advantage of the flavoring from the first baking. And there are some indications and historical cooking instructions that the crust would on occasion be broken up into small pieces and added to things like stew as a thickener. It's like they took advantage of its flower content like a third time. Like you could bake your pie in it, then you could bake another thing in it, like a super something soft like that, and then you could break it all down and grind it out in and make your stews a little bit thicker in that way. Uh. During the medieval period in Europe, pie became a means of expressing wealth and creativity, and these pies would sometimes have a live element. If you have heard the nursery rhymes sing a song of sixpence, you probably recalled pretty quickly the line about four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, and those birds start to sing when the pie is cut open. I remember being real freaked out by that as a kid and wondering what the inside of the pie looked like and how the birds had survived baking because I was not bright enough to have done the math on it. UH. Pies with an animated element did become quite popular for a while, and of course that living element was added after the crust was baked. Often it was baked with a wooden shaper or scaffolding inside so that the dough would retain its shape. Then the animals and sometimes even people. Some of these pies were enormous and allegedly contained entire orchestras. UH. Those items would be placed inside before where the pie was revealed to the dinner guests and then became part of their entertainment. An Italian cookbook from titled Epulario describes how quote to make pie that the birds maybe alive in them and fly out when it is cut up. That wording delights me. This recipe describes making a large pastry crust with a hole in the bottom about the size of a fist. To bake it, you fill it up with flour and then pour the flour out. Once the crust is done, cooking. To complete the process, you fill the pie from the bottom with birds through that hole that you had made. The recipe continues quote, and this is to be at such time as you send the pie to the table and set before the guests, where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will fly out, which is delight and pleasure show to the company. I still have questions about the hygiene of the whole situation, but that's yeah. I wouldn't eat I mean, nobody would be eating it. But my concern is even like having a bird hopping around on your dinner table, not always hi or any animal. I'm not anti bert. But aside from making pies into living theater, cooks during the medieval time would also work to create some incredibly lavish and sometimes enormous pies. Very ambitious chefs would even create architectural wonders with pie, building the exterior crusts into things like castles or other decorative items. In a moment, we will talk about fruit pies and the first known cherry pie, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. As we mentioned before the break, fruit pies also started to appear in medieval Europe. In some cases these would have been open faced without a top crust. That's what we would call it tart today. Apple pie is referenced in the writing of Chaucer. He actually provided the first known apple pie recipe in one and that reads us follows, quote, take good apples and good spices, and figs and raisins and pairs, and when they are well brayed colored with saffron, well and do it in a coffin, and do it forth to bake. Well. I love it. I don't know why I'm so charmed by that. In England's pie became a thing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, and it said that the first cherry pie was made for the Queen herself. We don't actually have a record of what she thought of it, but the fruit pies became more popular during Elizabeth the First rain they weren't anywhere near as sweet as modern fruit pies. Sugar was a luxury for the very wealthiest people, and most fruit pies, even for people high on thes of the social ladder, dependent on the natural sugar of the fruit to make them sweet. Often dried fruits were used, and that would have concentrated the flavor and back to savory pies at the time. If you have ever read or seen the play Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, you may recall that pie becomes part of a grizzly revenge plot. The title character has two brothers who had attacked his daughter Lavinia, baked into a pie, which he then serves to their mother. In the mid fift hundred's, the book A proper New Book of Cookery was published and included all kinds of dishes. You could get recipes for making preserves, stewing broth, preparing meats, and of course, baking pies from it. The idea of a tart a small pie was already established, and there is a recipe for making crusts for them. It reads as follows quote to make short paste for tart, take fine flour and a cursey of fair water, and a dish of sweet butter, and a little saffron, and the yolks of two eggs, and make it thin and as tender as you may. So. By this point we can see that the crust was being made to be less of a sturdy baking vessel and more a part of the food itself. This treatment of the crust made thin and tender sounds pretty good, not too far from a pie crust recipe you would probably find today, although of course there are no measurements in there. As an aside, egg yolks may or may not show up in a modern recipe. They make the dough a bit more pliable and easier to work with than the dough made without the egg. This is just making me remember all kinds of episodes of the Great British Baking Show and various times that they've made various older styles of pies with various types of crust recipes. When European colonists moved to North America, they of course brought their cooking tradition as well, and that included pie. The methods of cooking evolved, of course to work with the available foods of the continent, but there was also a significant influence on pie and all cooking and baking in the colonies from the rise of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and then in the southern parts of North America. There had been European run sugar plantations in South America as early as the sixteenth century, but as more Europeans moved across the Atlantic. Plantations on Caribbean islands grew rapidly in number and in size, and the Transatlantic slave trade enabled those plantations to produce lots and lots of sugar, making what had been a luxury item something that was pretty accessible to most people, and that meant that fruit pies got a lot sweeter. By the time the US gained its independence, the taste for sugar was completely ingrained in the culture of its white European descendant population. In seventeen nineties six, the first cookbook in the United States came out. It was titled American Cookery, Or the Art of Dressing Beyond Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables and the Best Modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes from the imperial plum to plain cake adapted to this country and all grades of life. This offers insight into where the newly founded country was in terms of pies, because you get really a bit of everything, sweet savory pies with hard crusts, pies with biscuit toppings, and pies with more familiar types of crusts. The recipe for what the author, Amelia Simmons calls a sea pie makes it apparent that this is not a pie made with seafood, but one that is meant to be carried onto a ship for a voyage, and there are a lot of such see pies in old cookbooks. This one includes a lot of food and a lot of crust because it starts with four pounds of flour. It reads quote four pounds of flour, one and half pound of butter, rolled into paste, wet with cold water. Line the pot therewith lay in split pigeons, turkey pies, veal, mutton, or birds, with slices of pork, salt, pepper, and dust on flour, doing thus till the pot is full, or your ingredients expended. Add three pints of water, cover tight with paste, and stew moderately two and a half hours. That sounds so huge. It does sound enormous. Simmons offers up two versions of apple pie, and her book. We'll see in a moment that some cookbooks started giving what they called English and American versions of pies. But in this case the differentiator is that one gets some extra ingredients and a very savory one let's added after it cooks for a little while. Both of these have sugar as an ingredient, so it's apparent that this was a commonplace ingredient while baking at this point. Here is the basic recipe for apple pie as given by Simmons. Stew and strain the apples to every three points, grate the peel of a fresh lemon, Add cinnamon, mace, rose, water, and sugar to your taste, and bake in paste number three. Every species of fruit such as peas, plums, raspberries, blackberries, may be only sweetened without spices, and bake in paste number three. That paste number three that's mentioned is dough. Oddly, the way the cookbook is organized, the dough recipes come after the pie recipes. But here's how paste number three is made. Quote to any quantity of flour, rub in three fourths of its weight in butter twelve eggs, so a peck, rub in one third or half, and roll in the rest. But the other apple pie that Amelia Simmons included has an extra ingredient, and that is more butter, and it goes into the pie after it's cooked for a while. This recipe is simply titled a buttered apple pie. And these are the instructions. Pair quarter and core tart apples, lay in paste number three, cover with the same bake half an hour. When drawn gently, raise the top crust, Add sugar, butter, cinnamon, mace, wine or rosewater. There's also a note in American Cookery within the section on pies that reads quote observations all meat pies require a hotter and brisker oven than fruit pies, and good cookeries, all raisins should be stoned. As people differ in their tastes, they may alter to their wishes, and as it is difficult to ascertain with precision these small articles of spicery, everyone may relish as they like and suit their taste. I do love that, because I am that person that's like experiment in the kitchen, and I that old cookbooks were saying the same thing. In the first half of the eighteen hundreds, Chef Alexei Benois Souier left France for England and rose to prominence There is one of the most popular chefs of his time. He is pretty fascinating and will very likely be a future episode. Soyer wrote a number of books, but in eighteen forty nine he penned The Modern Housewife or Menager, comprising nearly one thousand receipts for the economic and judicious preparation of every meal of the day, with those of the nursery and sick room, and minute directions for family management in all its branches. And this book was intended as a guide primarily for women running households to create dishes as delicious as those that would be served in fine restaurants, and to do so on a budget. And one of the ways that the chefs suggests economizing is by using leftovers to make hash or to be included in pies. He also has a lot of recipes for pies, and he was not the least bit shy about shifting away from the crust as baking dish approach. Moving over to pie, Tens writing quote, having found a great difficulty in raising the crust for a pie with my hands, I purchased for a trifle a tin pie mold, by the use of which the process is more simple, and the pie retains its shape whilst baking and secures the gravy much better. He gives a recipe in his book for hot lam pie which outlines his method for making pie crust. Quote put a quarter of a pound of butter and the same of chopped suet into a stew pan with half a pint of water, and let the whole boiled together one minute. Then strain it through a sieve into a basin containing two pounds of flour, mixing it first with a spoon and when cool enough, with the hand until forming a smooth paste. He then directs the home cook to layer small cuts of meat with potatoes, onions, parsley, and seasoning into the crust, which is inside a dish, covering with the remaining crusted paste, and baking for two or more hours. The soy pie is drained of fat before serving, and then gravy is at him. He has many many savory pies in his book, including those for mutton, chicken, grouse, partridge, and eel. We mentioned a moment ago that fruit pies had already become popular in England well before the North American colonies were founded, and apple pie has become something of a national identity dish for the United States, even though it's really just a much sweeter version of the ones that were made in England during colonization, and as we mentioned, earlier Chaucer had an apple pie recipe. Apple pie also had to be seated around North America. Uh so it really might have been a lot more fitting to have made pumpkin pie the emblem of baking in the United States. In eighteen fifty two, Sarah J. Hale published The Ladies New Book of Cookery, and within it she two different versions of pumpkin pie, one made the American way and one made the English way. She did the same thing for apple pie, but the two of those are very very similar. The main difference is the inclusion of clove and nutmeg in the English version, but pumpkin pie was a different story with two very different preparations. The English way is pretty simple. Quote take out the seeds and grate the pumpkin to you come to the outside. Skin, sweeten the pulp, add a little ground allspice, lemon peel, and lemon juice. In short, flavor it to the taste. Bake without an upper crust. So if you live in the United States, and if you have ever made a pumpkin pie from scratch, or if you've eaten a pumpkin pie, this may sound a little bit odd to you because it would not produce that smooth, textured, relatively homogeneous, and custard like filling that any of us would normally see on a pie on a holiday like Thanksgiving. Yeah, it reminds me more of a dish that my grandmother made called sweet potato pudding that used graded sweet potato delicious, extremely good. Yes, the American pumpkin pie recipe that Hail included is a lot more involved. It begins quotes, take out the seed and pair the pumpkin or squash. But in taking out the seeds, do not scrape the inside of the pumpkin. The part nearest the seed is the sweetest. Then stew the pumpkin and strain it through a sieve of colander to a quart of milk. For a family pie, three eggs are sufficient. Stir in the stewed pumpkin with your milk and beaten up eggs till it is as thick as you can stir around rapidly and easily. There's also a little aside in this recipe about how you can make your pumpkin pie richer by adding sweet cream or more eggs, and then quote sweetened with molasses or sugar, add two tea spoons of salt, two tablespoons of sifted cinnamon, and one of powdered ginger, but all spice may be used, or any other spice that may be preferred. The peel of a lemon grated in gives it a pleasant flavor. The more eggs, says an American authority, the better the pie. Bake about an hour in deep plates or shallow dishes without an upper crust, in a hot oven. This is a good illustration of how recipes can change and adapt. Most food historians agree that the pumpkin pie first came about when colonists were just trying to make do with what they had in North America, and pumpkins are native to North America. This is why the English recipe, which probably made its way back across the Atlantic and was adopted there, is closer to the way you would make an apple pie. Incidentally, Hale writes of making pie crust, though she uses the term paste, and she makes it clear that its success or failure is entirely dependent on the skill of the person preparing it. She writes, quote, the art of making paste requires a good memory, practice, and dexterity, for it is principally from the method of mixing the various ingredients of which it is composed, that paste acquires good or bad qualities. We're going to talk more about pumpkin pie in a moment after we hear from the sponsors who keep stuffy miss in history class going. In eighteen fifty four, just two years after The Ladies New Book of Cookery was published, English Canadian author Catherine Parr Strickland Trail published a book titled The Female Emigrants Guide and Hints on Canadian Housekeeping, and Trail too had a recipe for pumpkin pie. She gives a lot more detail and instruction regarding how to prepare the dish, specifically the cooking of the pumpkin. It goes quote, select a good sweet pumpkin, fully ripe, to ascertain if it be a sweet one, For there is a great difference in this respect. Cut a piece of the rhine and taste it, or cut several and then you can judge which is best. The sweetest pumpkins require less sugar and are much richer. Then it continues pare and cut the fruit into slices, removing the seeds and also the fibrous spongey part next to the seeds, cut it into small pieces, and put it on the fire with about a pint of water covering the pot close. You are not to bruise or stir it. Should the water boil away so as to endanger the pumpkin burning to the bottom of the pot. A small quantity more of water maybe added. It will take three or four hours to boil, quite soft and of a fine brownish yellow. Some improve the color and richness by setting the pot on a few embers near the fire and keeping the pot turned as the pulp browns at the sides, but this requires to be carefully attended to. The pumpkin pie lovers among our listeners will probably agree with the following sentiment from Trail, although your mileage may vary on the second part of this quote. Quote. A finer dish than a good pumpkin pie can hardly be eaten, and it is within the power of any poor man's family to enjoy this luxury. If you do not grow this fruit, any neighbor will give you one for the asking. I just want to go to a neighbor now, I'd be like, do you have a pumpkin? I watched them go. What is wrong with you? However, though pie, both apple, and pumpkin have been much belowed for decades here in the United States, there has also been a push and pull regarding its close ties to the nation's identity, and at the turn of the twentieth century, pies popularity had dropped off, but there was a very vocal group of supporters who really wanted pie to be elevated and recognized as an important part of US history. Others did not, so To illustrate this argument that was going on, the following two examples are articles that both appeared in The New York Times in the same year nineteen o two, just a few months apart, and the first one is very pro pie. So on May third, two, the New York Times printed a short column extolling the virtues of pie. It's a little rara nationalism. It's obviously written from a white Eurocentric point of view, but it also offers a look at how the idea of pie had become deeply entwined with the national identity of the United States. It read, in part quote, pie is the food of the heroic. No pie eating people can ever be permanently vanquished. It is a significant historical fact that England's glory was greatest in the days when her gallant Son's eight pie. Then slowly the pernicious influence of the shopkeeping element grew, and gradually the dimensions of the pie were reduced, until now it has dwindled to the insignificant tart. As the pie declined, the high ideals were lowered in the prestige and power of Great Britain were dissipated. True, there are doctors who preach against the pie habit, but no one has ever known a doctor to refuse a second piece of pie, just a brilliant pilo there. Then, on August ten, in a magazine section of the New York Times, they ran a piece titled The Great American Pie, and it's author, Kate Masterson, had some very strong feelings about pie. They were not positive. Masterson wrote, quote, pie is really an American evil, one from which is a nation we are now happily emerging. Pie, placed where it belongs in the list of desserts, is lacking in all the elements that should go to make it desirable. The criticisms that follow include the opinion that the pie is lacking in delicacy and sophistication. It is not as elegant as plain fruit, and that it is quote too ornate and pretentious. But Kate was just getting started, because then she writes that pie is one of the quote un moral foods, which she defines as quote those possessing admittedly injurious qualities. Not only are the various health problems of pie mentioned, notably dyspepsia, but there's also the hint that pie eating will cause pe addiction. This is followed by a rather firm assertion that quote the hardened pie eater becomes art blind. Nothing makes him glow or warms him to any enthusiasm but his chosen food. No great man was ever fond of pie. I did not know how vehement the pie fight had been in the U turn of the twentieth century. This all sort of tickled me um. But as more women started entering the workforce, the popularity of pie did continue to drop off because fewer people just had time to bake, and particularly to do anything that involved a lot of steps. But post World War Two, as convenience foods became popular, things like pre made pie crusts and easy recipes that were made with things like pudding mixed kind of reinvigorated interest in baking pies, but as this interest continued into the second half of the twentieth century in the US, the popularity of those more traditional and more involved recipes once again rose. While the pie as we know it today is really a largely Western food, As missionaries and other travelers have moved throughout the world and introduced the concept of other places, other cultures have developed their own unique and delicious pies. A coconut pie called buco pie is popular in the Philippines, and Australia has a delicious savory pie tradition going back to its roots in England. In Samoa, a sweet pie made with coconut and pineapple that resembles an impanata is called a pie fala and is very popular. And Jamaica has a handheld meat pie called a beef Patty that uses turmeric in the crust. So pie has become the ultimate kitchen improv item because you can put whatever you want inside of a crust um just because I think folks may right to ask about it. As you were working on this, did you find anything about that article that went viral a couple of years ago about how pumpkin pie was like greatly an abolitionist dish um, Yes, And I didn't include it because there's a lot of argument and not a lot of actual stuff to back it up. We can talk about it more on Friday. I was just one of those things where I was like, I bet if we don't say this, we're going to get a flood of email from people being like, how did you not mention this article? Yeah, I mean it's um, that's a big theoretical. People are free to discuss and debate, but like I said, there's not a lot to like really back it up. It was kind of going on as we were like, let's make everything as sweet as sweet possible. Yeah. It was one of those things that a lot of aspects of it felt really circumstantial to me, but uh then you know, who knows. Anyway, I just thought i'd check do you have listener mail? I do, And this listener mail made me chuckle and offers up uh an opportunity to talk about a thing that I'm in love with. It's from our listener, Emily, who writes high Holly and Tracy, I hope you're both doing well. Thanks as always for the hours of learning and entertainment you both work so hard to provide. There is a show on HBO Max called Our Flag Means Death that you may have heard about heard about. I'm devoted to it. It stars Psycho at Rees, Darby, Leslie Jones, and a ton of other hilarious people. It's about the life of Steed Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate. I only knew about Bonnet from your show, and when I thought about asking you to rerun it as a Saturday Classic, I checked my feet and saw you did. In side note, it feels like you started classics a year or two ago, and seeing that it was nearly four years ago was jarring to me too. Uh, since it has been so long, I thought I might suggest it again, giving his little blip in pop culture. Now. Our Flag Means Death is funny and profane, not for young listeners, but I highly recommend it if you need to laugh anyway, Thanks again for all of your work, Emily. Are you watching this show, Tracy, I'm like four or five episodes into it got him in love with it. Yeah, it's funny because I've had a couple of friends go but it's not historically accurate, right, And I'm like oh no. But part of what makes it so rich is that it explores there's that element of the Steed Bonnet and black Beard story where Blackbeard took command of his ship of Steve Bonnets ship, and that there question marks around how that was arrived at and it didn't seem like it was ever. You know, some people are like, no, he surely must have vanquished him and taken him hostage, but there's no real evidence of that, and there does appear that that Steve Bonnet may have been willing to just be like, no, you can have it, which opens up this very very rich space to explore. And that's why I just think it's a fun, really smart way to examine what what that relationship could have been. Obviously not historically accurate to the best of our knowledge, but wow is it fun. Yeah. Leslie Jones for days. I love her on that show so much. Um and I It's one of those things too that I think sometimes people think if you uh study history or talk about history for a living like we do, like we would not be down with fictionalized history. Could not be further from the Yeah, Honestly, I would rather see something really creative that just plays around with things than like totally factual, like you feel like you're gonna hear a beep and it will get right. Yeah. I also feel like he doesn't get mentioned nearly enough. But the person who created that show is actually David Jenkins. Sometimes tycho A t T gets credit for having created it, and I understand he's a very creative and fascinating person. I love pretty much everything he's ever touched, but m David Jenkins gets all of the and that cast is spectacular. Um. Yes, if you haven't watched it and you're down with some profanity and some very very silly things, it's a very fun one. Highly recommend it. Uh. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media pretty much everywhere as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeart radio app or wherever it is you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.