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The picture as currently shown isn't a pie, it's cheesecake. :)
I don't know how to fix that; could we have the old picture back? Not that I don't like the new one--but it doesn't illustrate the topic. -- Minority Report 21:33, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(all I see is
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/250px-Motherhood_and_apple_pie.jpg, which is some sort of soft porn... O_o, whilst the image itself (NOT the thumbnail) is back to normal thanks to Norm... so, is it just my browser-cache or what?) - this seems to have been resolved. someone care to explain to me, how the thumbnail system works?
It's you browser cache. Refresh the page and it should be ok. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 08:47, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I refreshed my browser cache and the purty ladies went away. Um, I change my mind. Can I have them back? -- Minority Report 02:35, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't know 2600:8807:3F10:300:8818:7AC:111D:CE52 ( talk) 06:34, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
"Cane sugar imported from Egypt was not widely available in 14th century England (costing the equivalent of US$100 per kilo)."
Oh come on! I can buy that possibly sugar beet production wasn't common in the middle ages. I can buy that possibly cane sugar had to be imported to Western Europe from Egypt. What I find difficult to swallow is that it's possible to come up with a fourteenth century exchange rate for a currency that hadn't been invented yet! Could somebody explain this? -- Minority Report 20:06, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I still don't see any justification for calculating the cost of a product in a non-existing currency. What value would a dollar, the currency of a non-existent nation, have had in 1400? What President's face would have been on it? By all means find the price in shillings pertaining at the time, but to claim that it is possible to set a dollar spot price for 1400 sugar is like pretending that the builders of the Acropolis were paid in pounds sterling. -- Minority Report 23:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There were no Europeans in America at the time. You wave your hands and mention inflation, but that is something that happens at differential rates within a society. Since there was no European-American society in 1400 and no US dollar there can have been no dollar inflation. It is thus impossible to adjust the current dollar back for inflation. Now these people whom you describe as "economic historians" may be accustomed to performing such calculations, but if they do so presumably they are able to provide you with a convincing justification other than that they've done it "all the time." Perhaps you'd like to summarise. Since the US Civil War had not been fought in 1400, would payment in Confederate dollars have been acceptable? -- Minority Report 23:27, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Looking for hard data, I find a reference to a work called "The history of sugar", which lists contemporary prices (shillings and pence) for white sugar in England from 1259 to 1593 (Table 2 in link below).
http://www.maggierose.20megsfree.com/sugar.html
During the fourteenth century it rose from about 1s to about 2s per pound. Expensive, but no more so than the imported spices and raisins that were called for in the recipe. It seems that sugar was neither rare nor prohibitively expensive in fourteenth century England. Honey was several times cheaper and undoubtedly would have been included in the recipe if the cook had thought it necessary to sweeten the dish. I have quite often eaten apple pie made without added sugar and can vouch for its tastiness. -- Minority Report 13:31, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"Nobody is telling you that 2.2 pounds of sugar would have cost you $100 and there is no fictitious currency being used (it could just as easily be express in Yen). They are telling you it would have cost you the equivalent of $100 in today's terms." The crux is that there was no equivalent of the US dollar in the fourteenth century, whether Union or Confederate. Since the Civil War hadn't even been fought yet, the question of which of the two currencies to use for the comparison would have been impossible to answer, for a start. As for Yen, well I suppose it is possible that the Yen existed as a currency in foruteenth century, but that's a different question.
"Neither rare, nor prohibitively expensive" to whom?. To someone who could afford "gode Spycis" and "Safron", of course.
I'm not intentionally belittling anybody by recognising that comparisons expressed in non-existent currencies, though more reminiscent of fantasy roleplay than science, are fashionable; nevertheless I apologise for giving offence. This has nothing to do with the short-term comparison that you cite--there certainly is a good basis for an inflationary adjustment between 2004 and the late 1970s when Dixon's first stocked video recorders. But surely you must admit that seven centuries is something of a leap. -- Minority Report 15:19, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think you came pretty close when you suggested researching "what the weekly wage of a labourer was at the time." You might also like to find out what he spent his money on. The rest appears to be just pretty arithmetic with bits of precious metal. -- Minority Report 02:43, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I would add that what the recipe tells me straight away--from the absence of any artificial sweetener, including honey which could be harvested by the poorest peasant--is that the people of the fourteenth century had not the same sweet tooth as their Tudor descendants. -- Minority Report 15:30, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Read the article sugar beet. People did not consider its use in sugar production until nearly the 19th century, and it was only in that century that production actually became commonplace (in France and Germany due to war). As far as I am aware, Sugar Beet sugar only took over in the British Isles during World War II. We would probably not use sugar beet in Ireland now but for the fact that its production became essential to the farmers here (and it does grow really well), and so it became part of Western agricultural protectionism.
I've no idea when sugar beet started to be used in the US, but I don't believe it's as common there as cane sugar (beet sugar is near universal in Ireland by contrast).
Mind you, friends from abroad have told me they like the distinctive taste of the beet sugar, and certainly I am quite accustomed to it. (Cane sugar is nice IMO, but I wouldn't feel the need to switch!)
zoney ♣ talk 15:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This is very interesting, but I think it's emerging that the question of added sugar is tangential to the subject of apple pies. People in the middle ages probably didn't want to sweeten an apple pie because it was already sweet enough for them. To speculate that early apple pie recipes contained no sugar because sugar was far too expensive (which it wasn't) or rare (which it wasn't) is not justified by the known facts. -- Minority Report 16:27, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Does/did this thing exist, outside of Wikipedia or its spawn? As of today, New York seems to be served by the New York Apple Association, which doesn't mention a predecessor. Vermont and Connecticut have "Marketing Boards", but that seems about it.
Dubious indeed. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
In the gallery section of the article, there are two pictures of open-topped dishes. The Wikipedia article on Tart suggests that tarts are open topped and pies are covered with pastry. Note that this isn't strictly true in the UK, where "apple tart" is the common name for a covered top apple dish.
The pictures should be removed. While "tart" can refer to open or closed topped dishes, is the same true in reverse? -- 82.2.5.153 ( talk) 02:34, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
In the Pie section on wikipedia it's recorded that the first Pie recipe is from an tablet from 2000+ BC in Sumer, it feels highly unlikely that it took 3300+ years before someone came up with the idea to instead use one of the most common fruits in history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.255.128.2 ( talk) 05:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Apple pie article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 60 days |
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The picture as currently shown isn't a pie, it's cheesecake. :)
I don't know how to fix that; could we have the old picture back? Not that I don't like the new one--but it doesn't illustrate the topic. -- Minority Report 21:33, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(all I see is
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/250px-Motherhood_and_apple_pie.jpg, which is some sort of soft porn... O_o, whilst the image itself (NOT the thumbnail) is back to normal thanks to Norm... so, is it just my browser-cache or what?) - this seems to have been resolved. someone care to explain to me, how the thumbnail system works?
It's you browser cache. Refresh the page and it should be ok. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 08:47, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I refreshed my browser cache and the purty ladies went away. Um, I change my mind. Can I have them back? -- Minority Report 02:35, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't know 2600:8807:3F10:300:8818:7AC:111D:CE52 ( talk) 06:34, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
"Cane sugar imported from Egypt was not widely available in 14th century England (costing the equivalent of US$100 per kilo)."
Oh come on! I can buy that possibly sugar beet production wasn't common in the middle ages. I can buy that possibly cane sugar had to be imported to Western Europe from Egypt. What I find difficult to swallow is that it's possible to come up with a fourteenth century exchange rate for a currency that hadn't been invented yet! Could somebody explain this? -- Minority Report 20:06, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I still don't see any justification for calculating the cost of a product in a non-existing currency. What value would a dollar, the currency of a non-existent nation, have had in 1400? What President's face would have been on it? By all means find the price in shillings pertaining at the time, but to claim that it is possible to set a dollar spot price for 1400 sugar is like pretending that the builders of the Acropolis were paid in pounds sterling. -- Minority Report 23:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There were no Europeans in America at the time. You wave your hands and mention inflation, but that is something that happens at differential rates within a society. Since there was no European-American society in 1400 and no US dollar there can have been no dollar inflation. It is thus impossible to adjust the current dollar back for inflation. Now these people whom you describe as "economic historians" may be accustomed to performing such calculations, but if they do so presumably they are able to provide you with a convincing justification other than that they've done it "all the time." Perhaps you'd like to summarise. Since the US Civil War had not been fought in 1400, would payment in Confederate dollars have been acceptable? -- Minority Report 23:27, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Looking for hard data, I find a reference to a work called "The history of sugar", which lists contemporary prices (shillings and pence) for white sugar in England from 1259 to 1593 (Table 2 in link below).
http://www.maggierose.20megsfree.com/sugar.html
During the fourteenth century it rose from about 1s to about 2s per pound. Expensive, but no more so than the imported spices and raisins that were called for in the recipe. It seems that sugar was neither rare nor prohibitively expensive in fourteenth century England. Honey was several times cheaper and undoubtedly would have been included in the recipe if the cook had thought it necessary to sweeten the dish. I have quite often eaten apple pie made without added sugar and can vouch for its tastiness. -- Minority Report 13:31, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"Nobody is telling you that 2.2 pounds of sugar would have cost you $100 and there is no fictitious currency being used (it could just as easily be express in Yen). They are telling you it would have cost you the equivalent of $100 in today's terms." The crux is that there was no equivalent of the US dollar in the fourteenth century, whether Union or Confederate. Since the Civil War hadn't even been fought yet, the question of which of the two currencies to use for the comparison would have been impossible to answer, for a start. As for Yen, well I suppose it is possible that the Yen existed as a currency in foruteenth century, but that's a different question.
"Neither rare, nor prohibitively expensive" to whom?. To someone who could afford "gode Spycis" and "Safron", of course.
I'm not intentionally belittling anybody by recognising that comparisons expressed in non-existent currencies, though more reminiscent of fantasy roleplay than science, are fashionable; nevertheless I apologise for giving offence. This has nothing to do with the short-term comparison that you cite--there certainly is a good basis for an inflationary adjustment between 2004 and the late 1970s when Dixon's first stocked video recorders. But surely you must admit that seven centuries is something of a leap. -- Minority Report 15:19, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think you came pretty close when you suggested researching "what the weekly wage of a labourer was at the time." You might also like to find out what he spent his money on. The rest appears to be just pretty arithmetic with bits of precious metal. -- Minority Report 02:43, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I would add that what the recipe tells me straight away--from the absence of any artificial sweetener, including honey which could be harvested by the poorest peasant--is that the people of the fourteenth century had not the same sweet tooth as their Tudor descendants. -- Minority Report 15:30, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Read the article sugar beet. People did not consider its use in sugar production until nearly the 19th century, and it was only in that century that production actually became commonplace (in France and Germany due to war). As far as I am aware, Sugar Beet sugar only took over in the British Isles during World War II. We would probably not use sugar beet in Ireland now but for the fact that its production became essential to the farmers here (and it does grow really well), and so it became part of Western agricultural protectionism.
I've no idea when sugar beet started to be used in the US, but I don't believe it's as common there as cane sugar (beet sugar is near universal in Ireland by contrast).
Mind you, friends from abroad have told me they like the distinctive taste of the beet sugar, and certainly I am quite accustomed to it. (Cane sugar is nice IMO, but I wouldn't feel the need to switch!)
zoney ♣ talk 15:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This is very interesting, but I think it's emerging that the question of added sugar is tangential to the subject of apple pies. People in the middle ages probably didn't want to sweeten an apple pie because it was already sweet enough for them. To speculate that early apple pie recipes contained no sugar because sugar was far too expensive (which it wasn't) or rare (which it wasn't) is not justified by the known facts. -- Minority Report 16:27, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Does/did this thing exist, outside of Wikipedia or its spawn? As of today, New York seems to be served by the New York Apple Association, which doesn't mention a predecessor. Vermont and Connecticut have "Marketing Boards", but that seems about it.
Dubious indeed. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
In the gallery section of the article, there are two pictures of open-topped dishes. The Wikipedia article on Tart suggests that tarts are open topped and pies are covered with pastry. Note that this isn't strictly true in the UK, where "apple tart" is the common name for a covered top apple dish.
The pictures should be removed. While "tart" can refer to open or closed topped dishes, is the same true in reverse? -- 82.2.5.153 ( talk) 02:34, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
In the Pie section on wikipedia it's recorded that the first Pie recipe is from an tablet from 2000+ BC in Sumer, it feels highly unlikely that it took 3300+ years before someone came up with the idea to instead use one of the most common fruits in history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.255.128.2 ( talk) 05:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)