Desserts with Benefits

Despite its name, it is in fact a cake, and not a pie.[2] The dessert acquired its name when cakes and pies were cooked in the same pans, and the words were used interchangeably.[3] In the latter part of the 19th century, this type of cake was variously called a "cream pie", a "chocolate cream pie", or a "custard cake".[3]

Owners of the Parker House Hotel in Boston claim that the Boston cream pie was first created at the hotel by Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian in 1856.[4] Called a "Chocolate Cream Pie", this cake consisted of two layers of French butter sponge cake filled with crème pâtissière and brushed with a rum syrup, its side coated with crème pâtissière overlain with toasted sliced almonds, and the top coated with chocolate fondant.[5] However, historians dispute this claim to primacy; while this cake may have been served then, there is no specific contemporaneous evidence of it, and custard-filled cake was already popular at that time.[3]

The cake is likely derived from the Washington pie, a two-layer yellow cake filled with jam and topped with confectioner's sugar, for which pastry cream of custard eventually replaced the jam, and a chocolate glaze replaced the confectioner's sugar.[2] Today, the cake is topped with a chocolate glaze (such as ganache) and sometimes powdered sugar or a cherry.

The name first appeared in the 1872 Methodist Almanac.[3] Another early printed use of the term "Boston cream pie" occurred in the Granite Iron Ware Cook Book, printed in 1878.[2] The earliest known recipe of the modern variant was printed in Miss Parloa's Kitchen Companion in 1887 as "Chocolate Cream Pie".[2]