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Happy National Pie Day (not to be confused with National Pi Day).
In his post-apocalyptic debut novel, “The Gone-Away World,” Nick Harkaway writes,
“Pie is . . . ephemeral. From the moment it emerges from the oven, it begins a steep decline: from too hot to edible to cold to stale to moldy, and finally to a post-pie state where only history can tell you that it was once considered food. The pie is a parable of human life.”
In honor of the ephemeral nature of the humble pie and in honor of National Pie Day on January 23, we have curated a list of the zodiac signs as pie slices because why the hell not?
Pie can trace its crumbs back to the ancient Egyptians who routinely ate a honey-laced version of the pastry and committed the recipe on tablets and the process on tomb walls, according to the accented academics at the BBC.
The Greeks, likely taking a cue and crust from Egyptian meat pies, served theirs in an open pastry shell, bringing a bit of a Mazda Miata convertible energy.
As pillagers and pie makers, the Romans prioritized topping and are alleged to have been the first to craft a pie with a top and bottom crust. Fun fact: the top part of the pie wasn’t meant to be eaten, laying waste and making waste those Romans.
The same proverbial roads that led to Rome led away from it, and the empire became a nation-state of pie-eaters.
From there to here and then to now, from chicken pot pie to lemon meringue, read on to learn more about the piece of pie for each zodiac sign.
ARIES (March 21 – April 19)
Coconut cream pie
Aries folk are an impulsive lot, prone to betting big, spending large and apologizing often.
In-kind, the coconut cream pie was born from a debt owed and curiously repaid. Legend has it that in the 19th century, a Caribbean businessman sent a shipment of coconuts to a Philadelphia flour miller to settle the score between them. The miller took to shredding, drying, and selling the coconut meat to bakers and homemakers, and before long, the people of this fledgling nation were screaming for coconut cream.
TAURUS (April 20 – May 20)
Pecan pie
Taurus folk love an unholy indulgence that requires very little effort to produce or procure. Enter the pecan pie or, better yet, the chocolate pecan pie. High AF on corn syrup and sweet enough to make your teeth ache, this Southern staple can be made with less than ten ingredients and is hot and ready in under an hour.
GEMINI (May 21 – June 20)
Rhubarb pie
Emotionally unpredictable, swinging wildly and daily from sweet to recalcitrant, Gemini is the sour patch kid of the zodiac. In-kind, the rhubarb pie is a balance of the vegetal and the candied, the earthly and the sublime, the sweet and the bitter, an edible metaphor for life itself.
CANCER (June 21 – July 22)
Apple pie
Comfort seekers and nest makers, Cancer rules the fourth house of home and root systems, and nothing recalls a wholesome childhood or our commercial concept of it quite like apple pie. For Cancers who prefer crumbs to lattice, IE, the ones who didn’t get enough hugs or orthodontic attention as children, the Dutch apple pie is more in line with the sign.
LEO (July 23 – August 22)
Lemon meringue pie
Meringue is to pie topping what a lush mane of hair or metaphorical crown is to the Leo native, absolutely essential to aesthetics and spirit. Add to this that Leo season roars during the high heat of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and lemon meringue pie tastes like late July and is known to soothe a sunburn.
VIRGO (August 23 – September 22)
Cherry pie
Brits are credited with inventing the cherry pie as an offering to the IRL virgin and apex Virgo herself. Queen Elizabeth I. No word on whether this pie was intended as a pun.
A natural redhead, Elizabeth’s taste for sugar was so expansive it turned most of her teeth black. To clear that haunting visage from your minds eye, I recommend a guilty pleasure listen of Warrant’s 1990 innuendo heavy banger, “Cherry Pie.”
Check out more of The Post’s food astrology content:
LIBRA (September 23 – October 22)
Peanut butter pie
In her book “50 Things To Bake Before You Die,” Allyson Reedy describes peanut butter pie “as a state of mind…A salty, sweet, creamy, bitter, rich mood that transcends calories and mascarpone and becomes a state unto itself. Because that’s what happens when peanut butter filling meets cocoa cookie crust — consciousnesses are cracked, and days are made.”
This rhapsody of union, which at the end there really sounds a touch like Burning Man wedding vows, is absolutely in line with Libra, ruler of the seventh house of partnerships and joined forces.
SCORPIO (October 23 – November 21)
Blueberry pie
No one revels in revenge more than Scorpio, and no sign is more willing to suffer in pursuit of it. The cinematic distillation can be found in the coming-of-age tale “Stand By Me,” wherein a bullied teen triggers a blueberry pie barf-o-rama as payback for body shaming.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 – December 21)
Shepherd’s pie
Ruled by lucky planet Jupiter, Sagittarius is the ceaseless optimist of the zodiac. The eggs are sunny side up, the lemons beget lemonade, and last week’s boiled potatoes and leftover scraps become the makes for the palatable patchwork that is shepherd’s pie.
CAPRICORN (December 22 – January 19)
Meat pie
Capricorn is the unparalleled opportunist and industrialist of the zodiac. Concerned with bottom dollars and ROI, it doesn’t encourage a two-martini lunch. The meat pie, specifically the Cornish pasty, was designed with the health and productivity of tin miners in mind. Workers could carry their lunch by the half-moon crust and discard it afterward, eliminating the risk of being poisoned by the dust on their fingers.
AQUARIUS (January 20 – February 18)
Key Lime Pie
Aquarius is the rebel-hearted, outside-the-box, or pie crust type, and Key Lime pie is born from scarcity and innovation. In the early 20th century, fresh milk and refrigeration were a rarity in the isolated Florida Keys. Legend holds that enterprising bakers created the pie using spoil-proof sweetened condensed milk and the tiny, mightily tart key limes that populated the chain of islands they called home.
PISCES (February 19 – March 20)
Boston cream pie
As the last sign in the zodiac, Pisces is equal parts idealist and nihilist, pie in the sky and burn it all to the ground. For this reason, we are awarding Pisces Boston cream pie. This dessert is real deal chaos energy, called a pie but nothing like it, the Boston cream rides the line between matter and mayhem, identity and illusion, the ephemeral and the edible just like our Pisces pals.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the star
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.
