January 26, 2011

The Parker House: Boston Cream Pie, Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X




Boston's Omni Parker House hotel, founded in 1855, is America's longest continuously operating hotel. Needless to say it's full of strange lore.

Did you know that Boston cream pie was invented at the Parker House? It's true. To help put his new hotel on the map Harry Parker, the hotel's founder, hired a French chef named Sanzian for a salary of $5,000. This was extremely high for the mid-19th century but I guess Parker's investment was worth it. Sanzian impressed local gourmands with dishes like aspic of oysters, mongrel goose, and ham in champagne sauce.

The icing on the cake, though, was his creation of Boston cream pie. Bostonians had been eating pastries and cream for many years, and used chocolate as a beverage or in puddings. But when Sanzian combined the three into one dessert people couldn't believe their taste buds. He had achieved culinary immortality.

The legislature declared Boston cream pie the official dessert of Massachusetts in 1996 (it beat out Indian pudding), and in 2005 to celebrate their 150th anniversary the Parker House baked a Boston cream pie that was sixteen feet across. It contained more than two million calorie.

Since Boston cream pie is really a cake, why is it called a pie? According to this site, most Americans did not have cake pans in the 19th century, but they did have pie pans. I guess anything that was bigger than a cookie and baked in a pan was called a pie!

Guests of the Parker House in 1912 and 1913 may have eaten Boston cream pie made by Ho Chi Minh, the future Communist leader of North Vietnam who opposed the U.S. during the Vietnam war. Born in 1890, he had fled Vietnam (then called French Indochina) to avoid persecution for his political beliefs. He wound up in Boston working in the hotel's kitchen as a pastry chef. I guess he opposed the French colonialists in Vietnam, but had still absorbed their baking skills! This sounds like a tall tale, but is true. In 2005 officials from the Vietnamese government visited the hotel kitchen where Ho Chi Minh worked. I'm not sure if they arrived in time to eat any of that sixteen foot Boston cream pie.

One other famous revolutionary worked at the Parker House restaurant. Malcolm X (then known as Malcolm Little) worked there as a busboy during the 1940s. That's a lot of activism coming out of one kitchen. I think the moral here is to always tip your server well because you never know when they might start a revolution.

I got all this information from Susan Wilson's The Omni Parker House. A Brief History of America's Longest Continuously Operating Hotel.

15 comments:

Dave said...

Folklore has it that Lobster Thermodor and the Parker House roll where also born @ The Parker House.

Unknown said...

wow...guess i'll have to walk up the street for a pilgrimage to see where ho chi minh worked!

Peter Muise said...

Dave - I don't know about lobster thermidor, but the Parker Roll is a definite. Apparently the hotel kept the recipe a secret until 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt requested the recipe for the White House.

bairdduvessa said...

very cool

B. Greene said...

That Ho Chi Minh worked at the Parker House is a great story that Americans need to think about. We attract people from all over the world who learn about our country. Hopefully, we teach them the good, not the ugly about America, because no telling what they will use their knowledge for. Ho Chi Minh whipped America's butt because He Knew Us; and we had no clue about him or his country.

JimmyDBoston said...

Dave, Lobster Thermodor was not created at the Omni Parker House. It's roots trace back to the infamous Wayside Inn.

JimmyDBoston said...

One other note about Ho Chi Minh and his Boston connection. There used to be 2 Natural Gas tanks on the I-93 Expressway (there is only one now). The smaller of the two originally had the rainbow stripes painted on it. Many people believe the painter of the original tank with the stripes was sympathetic to the Vietnamese cause and painted the profile of Ho Chi Minh into one of the stripes (blue I believe).

When they no longer needed 2 tanks, they kept the larger of the two. The one that did not have the stripes was the larger. They recreated the stripes, but I believe they elected to intentionally NOT reimpose HCM's profile into the blue stripe.

Peter Muise said...

Thanks for the comment, JimmyD! I never knew that about the gas tank.

Anonymous said...

I search google and your blog popped up with the Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X working at the same Hotel ,which by the way The Boston Cream pie originated .Great web site , go Blogger.. http://www.theurbanpontifficater.blogspot.com/

Amy Magee Downs said...

Thanks for the blog! Although it had information that I already had, I still reference it on my blog that is still in progress. We bloggers must stick together! 😉

Unknown said...

Another note about Ho Chi Minh was his appearance in Paris at the time during the discussions and debate about the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. Hi Chi Minh wanted to gain attention to the plight of the people of French Indochina. He was largely ignored.

Peter Muise said...

Thanks Unknown! Ho Chi Minh really got around. It's amazing that such an important historical figure worked at a Boston hotel - and he was not the only one!

Rich Clabaugh said...

Thanks for the post Peter! Now I have a hankering for some Boston Cream Pie!

Peter Muise said...

Thank you Rich! I do too, or even just a Boston Cream donut!

Anonymous said...

Not true. He was a fervent pro-American. He believed in the American dream and wrote Roosevelt to support his people’s quest for freedom from the French colonizers after World War II, based on the Allies supposed backing of the principles of democracy and the respect for the “peoples will”. Alas, Charles de Gaulle was having none of it and told Roosevelt firmly That he should not support Ho Chi Minh. As a result, Ho Chi Minh turned to USSR, and the rest is history.