Now we sing, to the tune of “Drunken Sailor”:
What shall we do with the leftover pie dough? … …
Cut it into slabs and then you bake them.
Do that, and you get the yummy stuff that Ann Daingerfield Zwicky called piecrust crumblies (a family term whose origin was lost to her); she used that name, so I did too, and my guy Jacques, and probably Elizabeth (Daingerfield Zwicky) as well, so maybe now Opal (Armstrong Zwicky) too. Such things get passed around.
(Spelling note: I will use the solid spelling piecrust, but many writers use the separated spelling pie crust; these are stylistic variants, and are listed as such by, among other sources, NOAD.)
Now it turns out that there’s a term of culinary art for the stuff; food writers seem to call them piecrust treats — a specialization of NOAD‘s
noun treat: an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure: he wanted to take her to the movies as a treat.
Whatever you call them, they’re just one possible answer to the question in my title, so let’s survey the uses of leftover piecrust dough.
What can you do with leftover piecrust dough? Let me enumerate the ways:
— 1 you can freeze it for future use
— 2 you make another, smaller, dish, like a pot pie, quiche, pissaladiere, empanada, mini-pie, or Pa. Dutch milk pie (also molasses pie)
On the last, see my 5/2/12 posting “Old recipes III: milk pie”, on
milk pie (and the related molasses pie) … These are “poor man’s pies”, made from bits of pie crust left over from making more substantial pies, plus minimal other ingredients. The result is something in between a piecrust bar and a (very shallow) pie. And the things have many names.
— 3 you can cook it as a snack: you can make
— — 3A (baked) piecrust treats — either savory (plain, or dressed with salt, pepper, and herbs) or sweet (dressed with cinnamon and sugar, like cinnamon toast)
— — or 3B (baked) piecrust cookies, with sweetened dough or with sweet toppings, in rounds or cut into shapes with a cookie cutter
— — or 3C (fried) pie fries (note: another term of culinary art) — again, either savory (perhaps with grated cheese worked into the dough) or sweet
Bonus notes on “Drunken Sailor”. From Wikipedia:
“Drunken Sailor”, also known as “What Shall We Do with a/the Drunken Sailor?” or “Up She Rises”, is a traditional English sea shanty, listed as No. 322 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It was sung aboard English sailing ships at least as early as the 1830s.
The song’s lyrics vary, but usually contain some variant of the question, “What shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?” In some styles of performance, each successive verse suggests a method of sobering or punishing the drunken sailor. In other styles, further questions are asked and answered about different people.
“Drunken Sailor” was revived as a popular song among non-sailors in the 20th century and grew to become one of the best-known songs of the shanty repertoire among mainstream audiences. It has been performed and recorded by many musicians and appeared regularly in popular culture
Among the Q&A variants is this one:
What shall we do with a drunken sailor? … …
Tie him to the mast and then you flog him.
Which I burlesqued as
What shall we do with the leftover pie dough? … …
Cut it into slabs and then you bake them.
July 24, 2024 at 11:22 pm |
I don’t recall singing or hearing ‘Drunken Sailor’ for 40 or 50 years, but some of the first lines come back to me. What has always puzzled me is why ‘early’ is pronounced ‘URL-eye’ rather than the usual ‘UR-lee’ of speech. Wikipedia discusses it briefly, but notes that the previous version was another pronunciation, ‘URL-ay’.
July 25, 2024 at 8:08 am |
As with the peculiar pronunciations of “pirate talk”, the peculiarities of the traditional renditions of “Drunken Sailor” probably go back to the English dialects of the areas from which sailing men were especially heavily drawn. Not that I can provide you with the details, but that’s the place to look.
July 25, 2024 at 8:07 am |
My mom used to roll out the leftover dough, cut it into a triangle shape, put in a spoonful of jam, fold it over, crimp the edges with a fork, and bake. She called the result a turnover. (A compound with stress on the first syllable.)
July 25, 2024 at 8:14 am |
Ah, from the cookie subcategory — filled cookies. Which are, quite simply, the pie-dough variant of hamantaschen.