One rider. 100+ pie recipes. A cookbook 18+ years in the making.
Eddie Senn has pedaled across Iowa on RAGBRAI every summer for eighteen years, stopping at church basements, fire halls, and roadside stands to collect the state's best homemade pie recipes — many of them older than the ride itself. Over seventy in the notebook. Twenty or so to go. Ragpie is the cookbook.
Ed, somewhere in Iowa
Why a South Carolinian rides Iowa for pie.
Eddie Senn grew up in South Carolina and lives in Washington, D.C., but every July he comes home to Iowa's back roads. Eighteen years ago he rolled out on his first Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — RAGBRAI — and never stopped coming back. Somewhere along the way, in between the ham balls and the beauty queens, he started keeping a notebook of every pie he ate. Church ladies, firehouse volunteers, grandmothers with laminated recipe cards — many of the recipes older than the ride itself. Over seventy in the book. Twenty or so to go.
"Every year is like a combination of the Fourth of July, Halloween and New Year's Eve."
His rule for the ride is simple, and he'll tell you himself: "I stop for beauty queens, ham balls and pies."
A haul from one afternoon at a church bake sale.
Field PhotoWhat's inside the book.
One hundred Iowa pie recipes, the towns they came from, and the tradition that carries them from one summer to the next.
100 Iowa Pie Recipes
Sour cream raisin, rhubarb, Dutch apple, chess, Snickers, gooseberry — collected from the bakers who serve them each July.
Town-by-Town Stories
Every recipe comes with the small Iowa town, the church basement or fire hall, and the person who baked it.
The Recipe Trade
Send Ed your favorite pie recipe. In return you'll get his mother's Chess Pie — the one that started it all.
Mrs. Senn's Chess Pie.
The recipe Ed trades for yours. His mother's Chess Pie, first passed on to the Harsh family after a sixth-grade bake sale in South Carolina — Claudia Harsh loved it so much her family asked for the recipe on the spot.
Ingredients
- 1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon cornmeal
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup butter, melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Whisk sugar, cornmeal, flour and salt in a large bowl.
- Add eggs, milk, vinegar and vanilla; whisk until smooth. Stir in melted butter.
- Pour filling into the unbaked pie shell.
- Bake at 425°F for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350°F and bake 30–35 minutes more, until the top is golden and the center barely jiggles.
- Cool completely before slicing.
From the kitchen of Mrs. Senn — as first written down for the Harsh family, c. 6th grade.
Join the waitlist.
Be first to hear when Ragpie ships. Bring a recipe if you've got one — Ed's still hunting the next fifty.