The English have been enjoying pies for centuries. But where does their name come from? For such an apparently humble word, pie has a mysterious etymology.
pie pastry c.1300, from M.L. pie "meat or fish enclosed in pastry," perhaps related to M.L. pia "pie, pastry," also possibly connected with pica "magpie" (see pie (2)) on notion of the bird's habit of collecting miscellaneous objects. Not known outside English, except Gaelic pighe, which is from English. In the Middle Ages, a pie had many ingredients, a pastry but one. Fruit pies began to appear c.1600. Figurative sense of "something easy" is from 1889. Pie-eyed "drunk" is from 1904. Phrase pie in the sky is 1911, from Joe Hill's Wobbly parody of hymns. Pieman is not attested earlier than the nursery rhyme "Simple Simon" (c.1820). Pie chart is from 1922.
Seriously, magpies?!
Is it perhaps related to the flat breads pitta and pide or Slavic pierogi? Is there a common PIE origin?
Best Answer
I don't have an answer but, there are a few French idiomatic expressions in which "pie" is connected to food. I mention them below in case somebody knows more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
Pie is the French word for Magpie. The "Mag" part is an abbreviation of Margot because this is also one of the various dialectal names of the Magpie in French.
There is an old French expression for a ricotta like young cheese: Fromage à la pie. From here the interpretations vary. Some say that this cheese was black and white because it was mixed with herbs (I find this interpretation dubious) and others say that this kind of fresh cheese is the best bait to tame a young magpie.
Another French expression closer to your citation is faire une pie de mouton. This expression refer to the recipe of broiling mutton blade-bones in order to strip off the last bits of meat. The link between the Magpie and the pie is still absent but, at least we're in the domain of food.
Finally, there is considerable evidence that the pie was introduced in Europe by returning crusaders from Middle Eastern countries. The early mince pie was also known as Christmas Pye, Crib Pye (because there was a place for the Christ Child on top of it) or Manger Pye ("manger" being French for "to eat"). The original pie was filled with various meats such as chicken, partridge, pigeon, pheasant, rabbit, etc.
[All these phrases are easily found in ancient French and English dictionaries accessible on Google books.]