[Sca-cooks] What is the difference between a pie and a tart?

[Terry Decker]

Tarts are filled pastry dough without a top.  Pies have a slightly broader 
definition being either open or completely sealed in dough.  Thus a tart may 
be a pie, but a pie might not be a tart.  However, the words tend to be used 
synonymously.
In terms of word origin, tart appears to be the older in English entering 
Old English from Old High German, while pie seems to come into Middle 
English from Latin, possibly via French.  I don't have my OED available to 
do a more thorough check.

The argument is similar to the question of precisely what is krapfen, which 
varies regionally in Germany.

Bear


Brekke commented:
<<< pumpkin tart (new this year, in lieu of pumpkin pie) >>>

Okay, what do you see as the difference between a pie and a tart? Brekke, 
why wasn’t the tart as good as a pie?  Did you vary the filling?

I’ve struggled with this for years in trying to figure out whether to put 
various messages in the tart-msg file or one of the pie-msg files. I thought 
pies had top crusts, but tarts did not. However, this would mean than all 
those things called pumpkin pies in the stores and restaurants are actually 
pumpkin tarts, not pumpkin pies.

Perhaps I should just merge both together, but split them out by filling 
types.

Thanks,
  Stefan