À La Mode Origin

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Herb, and I’m calling from Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Hi, Herb. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Herb. What’s going on?

Well, I’m calling about a question that involves two languages, English and French.

I was born in 1929 and went to an unusual public school where in the elementary grades we were taught both Latin and French.

So I had some smattering of French, and when I heard the words à la mode, I took that to mean stylish or custom, but I didn’t think it meant ice cream and was puzzled by that.

And I’ve always wondered why à la mode means ice cream.

Well, yes, so you probably have figured out that à la mode means basically in the fashion.

Right.

Right.

That’s what I thought it meant.

But why was the fashion ice cream?

Why wasn’t it lobster or something else?

Well, funny you should ask because long before we had a la mode, meaning with ice cream, particularly apple pie with ice cream.

Yes.

Long before that, we had things like beef a la mode in Britain.

Really?

Mm—

As far back as the early 1700s, people would talk about beef a la mode.

That was not beef with ice cream.

No.

No, that would be interesting.

That would be very interesting.

It’s sort of a way of making a recipe sound more exotic, I think, you know, a la mode.

It’s more foreign because, I mean, what you’re doing with the apple pie is simply tossing on a dollop of ice cream.

So it goes all the way back to the Latin word modus, meaning manner or fashion or style, the same term that you see in our term MO, modus operandi.

Yes.

I used to call it mode when I was much younger.

I would say, you know, mommy, can I have some mode on my pie?

But yeah, it’s just a little thing tacked on to make it sound fancier.

So it’s stuck with beef alla mode, right?

And that we don’t really eat that, although you can find it in cookbooks.

But for some reason, even though there are many, I even found horse a la mode.

Yeah, but for some reason, the idea of ice cream with pie stuck and was so popular.

Is this what I’m understanding?

Yes.

That the a la mode then stuck as well.

It kind of became a canonical dish that you could order in menus all across the country, and therefore the term spread with the food and became strictly associated with that sweet dish.

Fascinating.

There are a few claimants out there who people have said were the originators of Pi a la mode, but all of the theories that I’ve looked into do not check out.

Either the evidence is lacking or the evidence is fake, or a lot of it is like Chamber of Commerce-style wishful thinking where a town wants to claim a thing for its own just out of local pride.

Right, and that happens a lot with foods.

I mean, a lot of places will claim to be the home of the hamburger or Louisville, my hometown, claims to be the home of the cheeseburger.

And I just, I mean, I love those folks, but I just can’t imagine that that’s the first place that anybody thought of putting a dairy product on a hamburger.

Yeah, and the same with pie a la mode.

Once refrigeration became common in the United States, the idea of ice cream with your pie isn’t a stretch.

Yes.

In fact, it’s a really great idea, in my opinion.

And off we go. Let’s go have some now.

Herb, it’s been a delight.

Well, you’re teaching me good stuff.

Yeah, sure.

I knew you would.

Lifelong learning.

We’re all about that, Herb.

Thanks for your call, man.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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