The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library celebrated the 38th Annual Pi Day along with schools, bakeries, and libraries across the United States. On March 14, 1988, physicist Larry Shaw inaugurated the holiday at the San Francisco Exploratorium. He connected pie with pi (π), a unique irrational yet constant number, to stimulate interest in mathematics (and dessert). Since then, pie and pi enter each other’s orbit each March 14 in recognition of pi’s first three digits–3.14.
The Clark Library spotlighted its extensive collection of cookery books and manuscripts
, along with some early modern mathematics treatises, in Irrational Baking: 8 Pi(e) Day Recipes from the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The staff distributed the recipe book to participants at the “Cases and Scale in Historiography” conference organized by Michael Osman and Cristóbal Amunátegui, professors in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. The Clark Library also displayed eight cookery books and manuscripts and two mathematics books in its
South Bookroom, including Lydia Fisher’s The Prudent Housewife, or Complete English Cook for Town and Country (1800); Ignace Gaston Pardies’s Short, but yet Plain Elements of Geometry (1725); and the Hornyold Family’s cookery and medical commonplace book from 1662–1722. As a final treat, the staff of the Clark Library and the Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies served pie during the conference lunch break!
The recipe book is available in a digital format here: Clark Pie Recipes
Image 1: “To find the Area of a Circle.” Pardies, Ignace Gaston. Short, but yet Plain Elements of Geometry. Shewing How by a Brief and Easie Method, Most of What Is Necessary and Useful in Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, and Other Excellent Geometricians, Both Ancient and Modern, May Be Understood. Written in French by F. Ignat. Gaston Pardies. And Render’d into English, by John Harris. London: Printed for R. Knaplock and D. Midwinter, 1725. Clark Library Rare Book Stacks; QA453 .P22eE 1725 *.
Image 2: “A Cherry Tart.” Fisher, Lydia. The Prudent Housewife, or Complete English Cook for Town and Country: Being the Newest Collection of the Most Genteel, and Least Expensive Recipes in Every Branch of Cookery. Written by Mrs. Fisher. 12th ed./with additions. London: Printed by T. Sabine, 1800. Clark Library Rare Book Stacks; TX705 .F53 1800 *.