A pie supper is a social gathering where pies are auctioned to raise money, often for a local school or fire department. Pie suppers provided a major source of funding for many of the region's one-room schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At a traditional pie supper, women and girls would provide homemade pies to be auctioned, sometimes in boxes decorated with ruffles or bows. Along with the pie itself, the highest bidder won the privilege of sharing the pie with its maker, whose identity was concealed or known only to a handful of people. This prevented the offerings of less-popular or less-known girls from being neglected, earning more donations overall.
Pie suppers had strong courtship elements until the early twentieth century. Before birth control or child support laws, it was economically dangerous and socially unacceptable for an unmarried woman to interact with a young man her community didn't know. In rural America, where people were spread thinly, pie socials and boxed suppers were an acceptable way for young adults to widen their social circles. It also let a young man judge how well a possible wife could do her primary job -- cooking -- and gave the young woman some small idea of how well a potential husband could provide.
Pie suppers commonly included a "beauty cake" popularity contest. Several girls would be nominated to receive the cake, and their respective admirers would lobby for votes, which were typically priced at a penny each.
A box supper was a less common variation where the boxes auctioned off contained a chicken dinner, cookies, or a collection of food intended to be a surprise. Ozark box suppers were roughly equivalent to the box socials held in other regions.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
Lucy Ware Hayes was the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and served as first lady of the United States from 1877 to 1881.
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, fruit preserves, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
A picnic is a meal taken outdoors as part of an excursion, especially in scenic surroundings, such as a park, lakeside, or other place affording an interesting view, or else in conjunction with a public event such as preceding an open-air theater performance, and usually in summer or spring. It is different from other meals because it requires free time to leave home.
The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by the pen-and-ink illustrations of artist Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. The artist saw his creation as representing the composite of "thousands of American girls".
A wedding cake is the traditional cake served at wedding receptions following dinner. In some parts of England, the wedding cake is served at a wedding breakfast; the 'wedding breakfast' does not mean the meal will be held in the morning, but at a time following the ceremony on the same day. In modern Western culture, the cake is usually on display and served to guests at the reception. Traditionally, wedding cakes were made to bring good luck to all guests and the couple. Nowadays, however, they are more of a centerpiece to the wedding and are not always even served to the guests. Some cakes are built with only a single edible tier for the bride and groom to share, but this is rare since the cost difference between fake and real tiers is minimal.
A housewife is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which includes caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family; buying, cooking, and storing food for the family; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; partially or solely managing the family budget—and who is not employed outside the home. The male equivalent is the househusband.
A quinceañera is a celebration of a girl's 15th birthday. It has cultural roots in Mexico and Spain and is widely celebrated by girls throughout Latin America. The girl celebrating her 15th birthday is a quinceañera. In Spanish, and in Hispanic America, the term quinceañera is reserved solely for the honoree; in English, primarily in the United States, the term is used to refer to the celebrations and honors surrounding the occasion.
Box social is a term for a social event that was widely used in the early 1900s with varying definitions in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A girl is a young female human, usually a child or an adolescent. When a girl becomes an adult, she is generally referred to as a woman. However, the term girl is also used for other meanings, including young woman, and is sometimes used as a synonym for daughter or girlfriend regardless of age. In certain contexts, the usage of the term girl for an adult woman may be considered derogatory. Girl may also be a term of endearment used by an adult, usually a woman, to designate adult female friends. Girl also appears in compounds like showgirl, cowgirl, and schoolgirl.
Camfed is an international non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1993 whose mission is to eradicate poverty in Africa through the education of girls and the empowerment of young women. Camfed programs operate in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi.
A lady's companion was a woman of genteel birth who lived with a woman of rank or wealth as retainer. The term was in use in the United Kingdom from at least the 18th century to the mid-20th century but it is now archaic. The profession is known in most of the Western world. The role was related to the position of lady-in-waiting, which by the 19th century was applied only to the female retainers of female members of the royal family. Ladies-in-waiting were usually women from the most privileged backgrounds who took the position for the prestige of associating with royalty, or for the enhanced marriage prospects available to those who spent time at court, but lady's companions usually took up their occupation because they needed to earn a living and have somewhere to live. A companion is not to be confused with lady's maid, a female personal attendant roughly equivalent to a "gentleman's gentleman" or valet.
Female education is a catch-all term for a complex set of issues and debates surrounding education for girls and women. It is frequently called girls' education or women's education. It includes areas of gender equality and access to education. The education of women and girls is important for the alleviation of poverty. Broader related topics include single-sex education and religious education for women, in which education is divided along gender lines.
Tea has long been used as an umbrella term for several different meals. English writer Isabella Beeton, whose books on home economics were widely read in the 19th century, describes meals of various kinds and provides menus for the "old-fashioned tea", the "at-home tea", the "family tea", and the "high tea".
Food presentation is the art of modifying, processing, arranging, or decorating food to enhance its aesthetic appeal.
Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels is the ever-present background of her work, the world in which all her characters are set. Entirely situated during the reign of George III, the novels of Jane Austen describe their characters' everyday lives, joys, sorrows, and loves, providing insight into the period.
Arranged marriage is a type of marital union where the bride and groom are primarily selected by individuals other than the couple themselves, particularly by family members such as the parents. In some cultures a professional matchmaker may be used to find a spouse for a young person.
Bride price, bride-dowry, bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dowry is equivalent to dowry paid to the groom in some cultures, or used by the bride to help establish the new household, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. Some cultures may practice both simultaneously. Many cultures practiced bride dowry prior to existing records.
A pop out cake, popout cake, jump out cake, or surprise cake is a large object made to serve as a surprise for a celebratory occasion. Externally, such a construction appears to be an oversized cake, and sometimes actually is, at least in part. However, the construction is usually cardboard. The inside of the object has a space for someone, traditionally an attractive young woman, to crouch and hide until the moment of surprise, when she then stands up and comes out of the cake.
Braids are a complex hairstyle formed by interlacing three or more strands of hair. Braiding has been used to style and ornament human and animal hair for thousands of years in various cultures around the world.