Monroe Boston Strause

Monroe Boston Strause was an American piemaker whose innovations included graham-cracker crust, chiffon pie, and black-bottom pie. He was a "pie celebrity" whose name was "a household word."{{cite news |last=Perry |first=Charles |date=January 9, 1997 |title= The Pie King |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-09-fo-16635-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |location=Los Angeles |access-date=March 24, 2021}}

Strause was born in 1900 in Los Angeles. In 1919 he was hired by his uncle who ran a wholesale pie business. In his early twenties, Strause took over the business, following his uncle's retirement. He became a consultant in the 1930s after selling his company.

Because of improvements in oven reliability and consistency, homemade and increasingly complex cakes had been overtaking pie as a popular American dessert, which inspired Strause to his experimentations. He considered pie to be the "Great American Dessert," superior to most other foods.{{cite news |last=Anastopoulo |first=Rossi |date=March 24, 2020 |title=The 'Pie Engineer' Who Designed a Dessert For the Jazz Age |url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pie-history |work=Atlas Obscura |location= |access-date=March 24, 2021}}

Strause's technique was more scientific in nature; he called his recipes "formulas." The publisher of his book Pie Marches On described it this way: "He has reduced pie baking to an exact science and measures each ingredient with the care of a pharmacist." His focus on quality combined with secrecy and showmanship allowed him, according to The Globe & Mail, to earn "a bank president’s salary out of pie."

He was an early pioneer of the celebrity chef ethos. In 1960, Strause was hired as a consultant by Cannon Foods Inc. of Bridgeville, Delaware, to create recipes based on Cannon food products.{{cite news | newspaper=The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware) | date=September 21, 1960 | page=24 | title=Two Appointments Made By Bridgeville Food Firm | url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/90448393/cannon-strause/}}

Strause and his wife Violet Marian had a daughter, born May 21, 1938,{{cite book | last=Lamson | first=F.B. | title=Condensed History of Meeker County, 1855-1939 | publisher=Brown Printing Company | series=Genealogy & local history | year=1939 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DzRX_yt1b2cC | access-date=December 12, 2021 | page=203}} and a son.{{cite news | newspaper=The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California | date=April 22, 1949 | page=9 | title=Faith to be Topic of Rev. Hogarth | url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/90450130/richard-baptism/}}

Strause died in 1981.[https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G463-TJK Family Search] {{user generated source|date=December 2023}}