a la mode......Beef and ice cream

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>So, we've taken "pie a la mode" back to 1895.  I have no doubt that it goes
>back farther.  But can anyone truly tell me what it was?
>
>If  "beef a la mode" wasn't a piece of stewed cow with a scoop of tutti
>fruti on top, then why was "pie a la mode" a piece of pie with a scoop of
>ice cream on top?  How do we know that the pie didn't have cream poured over
>it, and this was considered "in the manner?"  When did the ice cream become
>the "mode?"  Any cites before 1920?

I don't have any.

Mencken ("American Language", Supplement I, p. 399, note 2): "In an
Associated Press dispatch from Cambridge, N. Y., May 20, 1939 the invention
of _pie a` la mode_ was claimed for Charles Watson Townsend, who had died
there that day. The inspiration seized him, it was said, while dining at a
local hotel, _c._ 1887, and soon afterward he introduced the dessert to
Delmonico in New York."

Is the tale true? Timing might be right. At any rate Mencken fails to note
any protests from 1939 about this putative origin, and such protests would
likely have followed the AP story if "pie a-la-mode" had had a common
non-ice-cream-related meaning 20-50 years earlier (not a conclusive
argument, I fully concede).

The derived verb "[to] a-la-mode" = "[to] put ice cream on [pie]" was
mentioned in AS (1:292) in 1926.

Mark Twain mentions strawberry pie served with ice cream in "Innocents
Abroad" (1868) IIRC ... he didn't call it "a-la-mode" ... it was part of a
fanciful French table-d'h^ote ... conceivably an imaginary or actual French
origin of the combination was the inspiration for the name (my wild
speculation only).

-- Doug Wilson