Clay Culture: Sing a Song of Pie Birds Lisa McDonald

Appears in the November 2023 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

Improve your baking with the aid of a pie bird, a specialized ceramic figurine that helps vent steam from close-crusted pies as they bake.

While baking is not my forte—yeast invariably faces a quick death under my watch—I love partaking in the many baked goods that proliferate during this time of the year.

Pie in particular features regularly in holiday meals. However, as steam rises from the iconic slits in the top crust, people may not realize there was a different—and more whimsical—way of venting pies in the early 20th century.

Venting double-crust pies that have bottom and top crusts is necessary to release steam as they bake. Otherwise, the top crust will not settle along with the fillings, leading to an air-filled gap between the crust and fillings that collapse when cut. Or, pressure from the steam could cause the crust to rupture, leading some of the filling to spill out and make the crust soggy.

While people today often vent pies by cutting slits in the top crust, in the early 20th century, people used hollow ceramic figurines often shaped like birds to vent the steam.

According to author Linda Fields in her anthology Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, the history of these pie birds can be traced to the Victorian era in Britain. Back then, bakers placed small cylindrical or hourglass-shaped ceramic funnels in the center of double-crust pies to release steam.

Around the 1930s, ceramic companies in the US started taking artistic liberties with the funnels. Likely inspired by the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” they morphed the funnels into birds with open beaks (though other animal shapes, such as dogs, were used as well).

Pie birds fell out of fashion by the mid-20th century, which Fields credits to fewer people baking at home and the invention of frozen pie crusts (patented in the 1950s and ubiquitous by the mid-1960s). But the birds have witnessed renewed popularity in recent years thanks to younger generations discovering the tools on eBay, Etsy, and vintage shops.

To use a pie bird, place it in the center of the bottom crust and then add the filling. Next, cover the bird with the top crust, with the bird’s head poking through. When baked, steam will escape through the bird’s mouth, and it will appear to “hatch” from the pie as the crust settles.

For a fun look at how pie birds are created, check out the article “A Thanksgiving Tradition: A Food Recipe and a Clay Project” by Craig Hinshaw, published in the January/February 2021 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated. As both a baker and ceramic artist, Hinshaw decided to create his own pie bird in the shape of a poodle, in honor of his childhood nickname. Also included in the article is his award-winning apple pie recipe!

the author Lisa McDonald is associate managing editor and science writer at The American Ceramic Society. Prior to this position, McDonald worked at the American Institute of Physics: FYI and the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. She has a master’s degree in science communication and specializes in communicating science to non-specialist audiences.