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Pie on the Windowsill - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Apr 07 2025

Pie on the Windowsill (trope)

A classic comedy bit that starts when someone bakes a pie and leaves it on the windowsill of their kitchen to cool. The delicious scent, represented by a cloud of fragrant steam, wafts out the open window and attracts a passing person, a dog, or other animal who wants to steal the pie. They come up and grab it, or just take a bite and run off, much to the anger of the baker who may run out and chase them with a rolling pin or broom in hand.

Stealing a pie from a kitchen window usually happens in a quaint, peaceful neighborhood where people feel safe enough to leave their windows open in the first place. A character who bakes a pie in the middle of the day is typically either a housewife or a grandmother, which implies two things about the setting: 1) the neighborhood has residential families in it, and 2) the work is depicting the old-fashioned family model where the husband works at a jobsite or in the field and the wife stays at home, cooks, and bakes.

Another thing to note is that a character who steals a pie almost never does it because they're actually starving, they just do it on impulse. They're probably not mean or desperate enough to actually break into the house and rob it, but a warm, freshly baked pie just sitting there out in the open? Too tempting to resist. Thus, the mild crime can be Played for Laughs in all sorts of ways. Maybe they're too short or small to reach the windowsill, or get chased by the angry housewife after nabbing the pie. As a result, the pie thieves are usually fairly sympathetic sorts — cartoon animals, neighborhood kids, and the occasional wandering Hobos are the most common predators of unattended pies.

Common variations and gags:

  • Someone smells the pie from far away and floats over to it while carried by the scent.
  • Multiple short characters like animals or small children stand on each other's shoulders to reach the pie.
  • Someone steals the pie and replaces it with a poorer substitute.
  • Someone tries to steal the pie and gets a Pie in the Face.
  • The main characters have to solve the mystery of who stole a pie from a windowsill.

Mostly a Dead Horse Trope nowadays because baking pies at home isn't as popular these days, now that you can just buy them at the local supermarket. Even for those who do bake pies in their home kitchen, modern air conditioning means there's no need to leave a fresh pie by an open window where it could get stolen.

Related:

See also Chekhov's Gun, since the mere appearance of a pie being cooled is enough to signal that it's going to figure in the plot, and Forbidden Fruit (bonus points if it's a Tempting Apple Pie?).

Examples:

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Comic Books 

  • Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: Discussed in "The Jersey Devil's in the Details". Young Stanley and Stanford are talking about what to do that day, and Stanley suggests stealing pies from windowsills.
  • Web of Spider-Man: In Vol. 1's issue #18, Peter is sent on an assignment to a small town, loses his clothes and Spider-Man costume, and has to steal a blueberry pie from a nearby window to sate his hunger.

Comic Strips 

  • Garfield: One strip has Jon leaving a pie on the windowsill to cool. Garfield, who is walking outside, sees it and naturally tries to go after it. Jon sees him in time and slams the window shut with a grin... succeeding only in destroying the pie and smashing its contents over himself.
  • Pearls Before Swine: In one strip, Rat and Goat see a pie cooling on a windowsill. Rat points out how they're supposed to steal it, and how it's a comic strip gag dating all the way back to the Great Depression...only for Goat to reply that he's gluten-intolerant, and there's no way the pie is gluten-free.

    Rat: What a waste of a comic strip.

Fan Works 

  • Beginning Trainer's Guide to Pokémon: In the Stunky & Skuntank chapter, the author makes a note that they can be gluttonous Pokémon who will wander into people's homes if the door or window is left unlocked, and help themselves to food lying around. They relate an anecdote from their childhood where their mother walked into the kitchen and saw a Skuntank eating a pie she left on the windowsill. She screamed in horror at the "foul purple demon" and chased it out into the garden with a broom.
  • Woolie the Liar Stole My Pie!: Nobody leaves their pies to cool on windowsills anymore because Woolie from Two Best Friends Play keeps stealing them. Woolie then progresses to breaking into houses to steal pies from their kitchen.

    Everyone had learned not to leave their pies out on the windowsills, but no one thought that Woolie the Liar would sink so low as to sneak into people's home and steal their pastries.

Films — Live-Action 

  • Life (1999): At the midpoint of the film, Raymond Gibson (who is already upset about being sentenced to life in a Louisiana prison and one of his latest escape attempts going awry) sees the warden’s wife has put a pie to cool on her kitchen's window and risks crossing the prison's firing line to steal it.
  • O Brother, Where Art Thou?: While on the run after escaping from a chain gang, Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar resort to stealing or foraging food to get by. Ulysses and Pete steal a pie off of a windowsill, and Delmar leaves a dollar bill behind as payment.

Live-Action TV 

  • "El Chavo del ocho": While not exactly pie, Doña Clotilde tends to leave food in the window specially chicken or tacos, leaving the smell to attract the children of the "vecindad", specially Chilindrina and El Chavo. In two specific episodes the kids, along with Quico, try to steal the food.
  • Key & Peele: In the sketch "Dad's Hollywood Secret", one of the incredibly racist roles that Otis Carmichael had taken on in his stint as an actor has him filch a pie from a windowsill while talking in stereotypical AAVE.
  • Reacher: Referenced in Season 2, which sees Reacher reunite with his old unit, who have all gone on to have normal lives and are fascinated by his Walking the Earth ways. When O'Donnell asks what he eats, Reacher sarcastically replies, "I steal pie off windowsills".

Magazines 

  • In the short story "Brave Dog", featured in Cricket magazine, a stray dog starts hanging around Mattie's house. Her mother angrily calls him a greedy dog after he takes a bite out of a meat pie she left on the windowsill.

Tabletop Games 

  • Magic: The Gathering: The card Bakersbane Duo from Bloomburrow depicts a squirrel and a raccoon working together to steal one of these.

    "I'll take the crust!" chittered the squirrel. "And I'll take the filling!" drooled the raccoon.

Video Games 

  • Zombie Inglor: The pie woman has one of her pies on the windowsill during the day. It gets switched with a week-old pie, and then given to the guard to allow passage.

Web Animation 

  • Homestar Runner: One of the many prank calls Strong Bad leaves on Marzipan's Answering Machine has him, under the guise of "Lorenz...Magazine...Man", trying to get Marzipan to bake all of her money into a no-bake apple pie and leave it on her windowsill, because he claims her subscription to "Soy...Bread...Tofu...Hybrid...Cars...Magazine" is about to erupt like a volcano. Strong Bad also assures her that the pie is still going to be there after she evacuates.

Webcomics 

  • Housepets!: Parodied; a human, Ms. McGillicutty, in the neighborhood bakes pies explicitly for the wild animals to steal for the sake of this gag. The animals play their part in the gag by acting as if they're committing a grand heist, scoping out and planning for the theft, only to politely return the pie tin when they're done.

Web Original 

  • The Hard Times: A satirical article claims that cartoon pies are now heating up on windowsills due to climate change. Several cartoon characters complain that the pies have become too hot to steal, and advise that we should take action now to avoid a pie-less future.

Web Videos 

  • Two Best Friends Play: In their Deadly Premonition LP, Matt and Pat joke about Jurisdiction Friction between the local police and FBI Agent Francis York Morgan, and suggest that the local cops are better suited to tracking down a pie thief:

    Pat: [as Agent York] How about, I'm in the FBI, and you're just some podunk lady cop from fucking wherever!

    Matt: [as Agent York] Why don't you find out who stole a pie on a windowsill!

    Pat: [as Agent York] ...WAS IT YOU???

    Matt: [as Agent York] You fat pig.

Western Animation 

  • Aladdin: The Series: This trope is mentioned in "Scare Necessities". The clumsy, luckless thief, Amin Damoola, gets his hands on a tiny, magical creature that that magically creates what Amin wants when he scares it. The second time Amin scares it, it creates a pie for him, and he says he’s always wanted to eat pie and that he’s failed to steal pies from windowsills countless times.
  • American Dad!: In "Persona Assistant", when Roger's criminal persona Ricky Spanish returns through Stan and goes on another crime spree, one of his misdeeds is stealing pie from a windowsill.
  • Amphibia: In "Friend or Frobo", Polly sees a beetle pie sitting on a windowsill and tries to steal it, but—being a tadpole—is only able to hop up to just below the window. Once she meets Frobo she tries to get him to steal the pie for her, but he accidentally smashes it, dousing Mrs. Croaker—who was about to buy it—with its filling.
  • Big City Greens: In "Harvest Dinner", Cricket and Gramma Alice are tasked with watching a pie cooling on the windowsill. Thinking they were saddled with an unimportant task, they bail; sure enough, the pie gets stolen by the farm's rooster.
  • The Chuck E. Cheese video "The Windowsill" has Pasqually put a pie in the window to cool off, and Munch is uncertain between eating the pie or leaving it be for who it's really with; he then goes into a dream sequence where he has a Solo Duet with his inner self over his decision. It is revealed in the end that the pie was indeed for Munch, and he happily wolfs it down.
  • Classic Disney Shorts: In the Donald Duck cartoon "Lion Around", Donald puts a pie on the windowsill to cool. The nephews dress as a mountain lion to scare away Donald and steal the pie. While Donald goes after the nephews, a real mountain lion goes after the pie.
  • Dennis the Menace (1986): In "The Great Pie Swap", Mrs. Wilson bakes a pie for Mr. Wilson and leaves it on her windowsill to cool. The pie smell gets the attention of Dennis, Joey, and Gina, who all want a piece of it. When they try to get it down, it splats onto Joey's head. Dennis gets the idea to replace the ruined pie with one of his own frozen ones. Gina reads the instructions on the box to Dennis, which say to cook the pie at 250 degrees for half an hour. Dennis decides to cook the pie at 500 degrees so it will only take fifteen minutes, but this backfires, as when the fifteen minutes are up, Dennis finds the pie burnt to a crisp. Meanwhile, Dennis puts Gina's Nutty Putty in the empty pie tin and shapes it into a pie to use as a decoy. Mr. Wilson finds the fake pie and eats it, which causes him to bounce around the neighborhood when he tries to walk it off.
  • Family Guy:
    • "Griffin Family History": Peter tells his family the story of his ancestor, Willie "Black-Eye" Griffin, a slapstick actor from the silent movie era. In his film "Piano Problems", Willie plays a furniture mover hoisting a piano onto the top floor of a building with a pulley, when someone leaves a pie on a nearby windowsill and he starts sniffing excitedly. He spots the pie and lets go of the pulley in order to steal it, and the piano falls on him.
    • "Amish Guy": Invoked by Quagmire. In an effort to help Peter learn willpower, he leaves a pie on the windowsill and instructs Peter not to Follow Your Nose no matter how tempting the steam from the pie is. Unfortunately, since it's a pie baked by Quagmire, the steam attempts to rape Peter while also forcing Quagmire to watch.
  • Garfield and Friends:
    • "Forget Me Not": Garfield steals a pie (with a Visible Odor) that Jon put on the windowsill, but a coyote takes it away from him.
    • "The Feline Philosopher": Garfield wants to steal a pie off a neighbor's windowsill, but a bulldog keeps chasing him away. A motivational speaker gives him speeches to try again, but his next attempts keep failing. Eventually, Garfield gets the dog to chase the speaker and reaches the house safely — but ends up getting a Pie in the Face, because it's Binky the Clown's house.
    • "Feline Felon": Jon bakes a pie for a charity bake sale, which gets Garfield's attention. Jon warns Garfield not to take it, as if he does, it will be stealing. Even though he doesn't leave it on the windowsill (rather, he leaves it on the kitchen counter), Garfield takes the pie anyway. When he goes to a tree to eat it, he falls off a branch and gets knocked out, having a nightmare where he's a criminal on a TV show called Wanted: Bad Guys. When Garfield awakens from his nightmare, he returns the pie to Jon. Surprised by Garfield's honesty, Jon reveals that he baked two pies and gives the second one to Garfield as a reward. When Garfield discovers that the second pie is a raisin pie, he tosses the pie at Jon, getting Jon to change his mind about Garfield's honesty.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • "Scary-oke": Discussed. When Grunkle Stan doesn't want Dipper talking to the FBI agents, he tells him to go off and do things that normal kids do, like "flirt with a girl or steal a pie off a windowsill."
    • "Society of the Blind Eye": As Lazy Susan is locking up the Greasy Diner for the night, she sees some gnomes standing on each other's shoulders and trying to steal a pie sitting outside one of the diner's windows. She calls 911 from a payphone, but is promptly kidnapped by the Society, taken to an underground chamber, and has her memory of the incident wiped.
  • Little Bear: In "Little Sherlock Bear", there was a pie on Little Bear's windowsill Duck and the others spotted; the pie is for Father Bear at dinnertime, and when it suddenly disappears, Little Bear and his friends decide to go on a whodunit mystery to find out who took the pie from the windowsill.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show: "A Yard Too Far" is a parody of this scenario. Instead of a pie, it's hog jowls, and instead of getting past an Angry Guard Dog, they have to get past a guard baboon.
  • Robot Chicken: In one sketch, a housewife deliberately puts a pie on the windowsill to attract and kill a hobo, then announces her intention to use the hobo's corpse to make the filling of her next pie so she can do it again.
  • Rugrats (1991): In "Cooking With Phil and Lil", Didi bakes a pie and leaves it on the windowsill to cool. The pie smell gets Kimi's attention, and she accidentally knocks it onto the ground, ruining it. Phil and Lil manage to replace the ruined pie with their own creation, "ant-wormies-mud pie". When they return the pie to the windowsill, Stu decides to help himself to it, unaware of what had gone on earlier.
  • The Simpsons: In "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", Bart and Santa's Little Helper find a pie cooling on Mr. Burns' windowsill after running away from home. Bart tries to swipe the pie but is forced to flee when Mr. Burns is alerted to his trespassing and releases the hounds.
  • Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City: In "Who Stole the Pies", someone eats all of Strawberry's pies that she left on her food truck countertop to cool. Lime Chiffon initially suspects one of the Berry Besties' pets did it, given how messy the scene was, but is unable to pin any of them as responsible. Upon seeing Huckleberry Pie messily eat a donut she gave him, however, Lime immediately deduces Huck was the true culprit. Unlike most examples, Huck didn't intend to steal the pies, as he genuinely assumed they were for him (Strawberry left a sign saying "Hot pies, only eat when cool", and since Strawberry thinks Huck is cool, he thought he could eat the pies).
  • Yogi Bear: In The Huckleberry Hound Show short "Pie-Pirates", Yogi and Boo Boo try to get a pie on a windowsill, but are thwarted by an Angry Guard Dog. By the time they deal with the dog, the pie is taken back inside the house.

Real Life