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sugar pie
DCHP-2 (Oct 2016)
Spelling variants:maple sugar pie, Sugar Pie
n. — Quebec, Food
a traditional pie made with maple sugar and cream.
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Sugar pie, along with its main ingredient, maple syrup, is associated with Quebec cuisine (see, e.g. the 2002 quotation). The associations are extended to the province of Quebec, where most of Canada's maple syrup industry is located, and to Canada in general (see maple leaf, Maple Leaf (flag)).
See also COD-2, s.v. "sugar pie", which is marked "Cdn esp. (Que)", and OED-3, s.v. "sugar pie", which is marked "esp. (in Quebec)".
See also COD-2, s.v. "sugar pie", which is marked "Cdn esp. (Que)", and OED-3, s.v. "sugar pie", which is marked "esp. (in Quebec)".
Quotations
1893
Maple Sugar Pie - One cup of maple sugar broken and rolled fine, two cups of sweet milk, yolks of three eggs, well beaten together. Line a deep pie-tin with paste. Fill it with maple cream and bake.
1937
Maple Sugar Pie: Put 1 cup whole raisins in 1.5 cups water. Boil until soft, then add 1 cup shaved maple sugar, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and salt. Thicken with 2 teaspoons cornstarch. Bake between two crusts.
1966
There is more to Gaspe cooking than fish: steaks, of course, and fluffy omelets and other delectable items. Vegetables were not canned or frozen, but fresh. Desserts were also delicious - things like sugar pie, fresh blueberry pie, country-made ice cream.
1979
Fresh fruit fool is a compendium of fresh fruits whipped with cream and sugar. It's delightful, and overshadowed only by the Quebec sugar pie, which is usually nauseatingly sweet. Montreal's sugar pie is like butterscotch pudding that grew up - creamy, not too sweet and delicious, topped with fresh whipped cream.
1984
The chocolate mousse doesn't quite make the cobalt blue grade; or is it that Montrealers aren't as chocoholic as Torontonians? Perhaps they have other sensual distractions. But the sugar pie, that disgusting Quebec classic that I love and hate, is divinely decadent, a pure maple syrup and heavy cream ooze. Some would say there's no point eating tarte au sucre: just apply it directly to the hips.
1997
Sweetest of the sweet is sugar pie. A springtime favourite in Quebec for generations, sugar pie is made by combining maple syrup, one of the few fresh food products at this time of year, with flour and sugar, which were among the few foodstuffs remaining in the larder at the end of winter. It truly is a simple preparation.
2002
Without knowing it, Quebec wants butter tarts. Its "national" dessert is the insipid "sugar pie," and most Quebecers, like Americans, have never experienced the epiphany that accompanies one's first butter-tart bite.
References
- OED-3
- COD-2