Apple pie

Apple pie
Apple pie with lattice upper crust
Course	dessert
Main ingredients	cooking apples, sugar
Food energy (per 100 g serving)	265 kcal (1110 kJ)
Cookbook:Apple pie  Apple pie

An apple pie is a fruit pie (or tart) in which the principal filling ingredient is apple. It is sometimes served with whipped cream or ice cream on top, or alongside cheddar cheese. The pastry is generally used top-and-bottom, making it a double-crust pie, the upper crust of which may be a circular shaped crust or a pastry lattice woven of strips; exceptions are deep-dish apple pie with a top crust only, and open-face Tarte Tatin.

Ingredients

Cooking apples^[1] (culinary apples), such as the Bramley, Empire, Northern Spy or Granny Smith, are crisp and acidic. The fruit for the pie can be fresh, canned, or reconstituted from dried apples. This affects the final texture, and the length of cooking time required; whether it has an effect on the flavour of the pie is a matter of opinion. Dried or preserved apples were originally substituted only at times when fresh fruit was unavailable.

Apple Pie is often served in the style of "à la Mode" (topped with ice cream). Alternatively, a piece of cheese (such as a sharp cheddar) is occasionally placed on top of or alongside a slice of the finished pie.^[2][3][4]

The English pudding

English apple pie recipes go back to the time of Chaucer. The 1381 recipe (see illustration at right) lists the ingredients as good apples, good spices, figs, raisins and pears. The cofyn of the recipe is a casing of pastry. Saffron is used for colouring the pie filling.

In English speaking countries, apple pie is a dessert of enduring popularity, eaten hot or cold, on its own or with ice cream, double cream, or custard.

Absence of sugar in early English recipe

Most modern recipes for apple pie require an ounce or two of sugar, but the earliest recipe does not. There are two possible reasons.

Sugarcane imported from Egypt was not widely available in 14th-century England, where it cost between one and two shillings per pound—this is roughly the equivalent of US$100 per kg (about US$46 per pound) in today's prices.^[5]

Honey, which was many times cheaper, is also absent from the recipe, and the "good spices" and saffron, all imported, were no less expensive and difficult to obtain than refined sugar. Despite the expense, refined sugar did appear much more often in published recipes of the time than honey, suggesting that it was not considered prohibitively expensive. With the exception of apples and pears, all the ingredients in the filling probably had to be imported. And perhaps, as in some modern "sugar-free" recipes, the juice of the pears was intended to sweeten the pie.

Dutch style

Traditional Dutch apple pie comes in two varieties, a crumb (appelkruimeltaart) and a lattice (appeltaart) style pie, both recipes are distinct in that they typically call for flavourings such as cinnamon and lemon juice to be added and differ in texture, not taste.^[6] Dutch apple pies may include ingredients such as raisins and icing, in addition to ingredients such as apples and sugar, which they have in common with other recipes.^[7]

Recipes for Dutch apple pie go back centuries. There exists a painting from the Dutch Golden Age, dated 1626, featuring such a pie. A recipe in a late medieval Dutch cook book 'Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen' (from around 1514)^[8] is almost identical to modern recipes.

The basis of Dutch apple pie is a crust on the bottom and around the edges. This is then filled with pieces or slices of apple, usually a crisp and mildly tart variety such as Goudreinet or Elstar. Cinnamon and sugar are generally mixed in with the apple filling. Atop the filling, strands of dough cover the pie in a lattice holding the filling in place but keeping it visible or cover the pie with crumbs. It can be eaten warm or cold, sometimes with a dash of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. In the US, "Dutch apple pie" refers specifically to the apple pie style with a crumb, streusel, topping.^[9]

Swedish style

The Swedish style apple pie is predominantly a variety of apple crumble, rather than a traditional pastry pie. Often breadcrumbs are used (wholly or partially) instead of flour, and sometimes rolled oats. It is usually flavoured with cinnamon and served with vanilla custard or ice cream. There is also a very popular version called äppelkaka (apple cake), which differs from the pie in that it is a sponge cake baked with fresh apple pieces in it.

In American culture

Apple pie was brought to the English colonies by the British, Dutch, and Swedes during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the English colonies, the apple pie had to wait for the planting of European varieties, brought across the Atlantic, to become fruit-bearing apple trees, to be selected for their cooking qualities as there were no native apples, except the crabapple which yield very small and intensely sour fruit with poor flavor.^[10] In the meantime, the colonists were more likely to make their pies, or "pasties", from meat rather than fruit; and the main use for apples, once they were available, was in cider. However, there are American apple pie recipes, both manuscript and printed, from the 18th century, and it has since become a very popular dessert. Apple varieties are usually propagated by grafting, as clones, but in the New World, planting from seeds was more popular, which quickly led to the development of hundreds of new native varieties.^[11]

Apple pie was a common food in 18th-century Delaware. As noted by the New Sweden historian Dr. Israel Acrelius in a letter: "Apple pie is used throughout the whole year, and when fresh Apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children."^[12]

A mock apple pie, made from crackers, was possibly invented by pioneers on the move during the 19th century who were bereft of apples. In the 1930s, and for many years afterwards, Ritz Crackers promoted a recipe for mock apple pie using its product, along with sugar and various spices.^[13]

Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the European colonisation of the Americas, "as American as apple pie" is a saying in the United States, meaning "typically American".^[14] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, apple pie became a symbol of American prosperity and national pride. A newspaper article published in 1902 declared that "No pie-eating people can be permanently vanquished."^[15] The dish was also commemorated in the phrase "for Mom and apple pie" - supposedly the stock answer of American soldiers in World War II, whenever journalists asked why they were going to war.^[16] Jack Holden and Frances Kay sang in their patriotic 1950 song The Fiery Bear, creating contrast between the popular view of the U.S. culture and that of the Soviet Union:

We love our baseball and apple pie

We love our county fair

We'll keep Old Glory waving high

There's no place here for a bear

Advertisers exploited the patriotic connection in the 1970s with the commercial jingle "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet".

Today, modern American recipes for apple pie usually indicate a confection that is 9 inches in diameter in a fluted pie plate with an apple filling spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg. and lemon juice, and may or may not have a lattice or shapes cut out of the top for decoration.^[17] The unincorporated community of Pie Town, New Mexico is named in honour of the apple pie.^[18]

See also

• Apfelstrudel (apple strudel), an Austrian pie-like dish made with dough, apples, sugar and spices.
• Apple cake
• Apple cobbler
• List of apple dishes
• List of pies, tarts and flans
• Tarte Tatin, a French variant on apple pie.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to apple pies.

• Food Timeline history Notes: Apple Pie
• A Apple Pie, by Kate Greenaway, 1886. Woodblock printed children's book, based on a much earlier rhyme; from Project Gutenberg
• The Dutch Table: Dutch Apple Pie
• Dutch Apple Pie Recipe by Liesbeth de Vos

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English cuisine Cooks & Cookbooks Middle ages The Forme of Cury (c. 1390) Early modern Hannah Wolley (The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet 1672) John Evelyn (Acetaria a Discourse of Sallets 1699) Eighteenth century Eliza Smith (The Compleat Housewife 1727) Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy 1747) Elizabeth Raffald (The Experienced English Housekeeper 1769) William Augustus Henderson (The Housekeeper's Instructor 1790?) Nineteenth century Mrs Rundell (A New System of Domestic Cookery 1806) Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families 1845 - The English Bread Book 1857) Isabella Beeton (Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management 1861) Twentieth century Mary Berry Heston Blumenthal Fanny and Johnnie Cradock Elizabeth David (A Book of Mediterranean Food, 1950) Clarissa Dickson Wright Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Keith Floyd Jane Grigson Sophie Grigson Ainsley Harriott Dorothy Hartley (Food in England 1954) Fergus Henderson Robert Irvine Graham Kerr Nigella Lawson (How to Eat, 1998) Jonathan Meades Jamie Oliver (The Naked Chef, 1999) Lorraine Pascale Marguerite Patten ( Everyday Cook Book in Colour, 1968) Gordon Ramsay Gary Rhodes Michel Roux, Jr. (Le Gavroche Cookbook 2001) Nigel Slater (Real Fast Food 1992) Delia Smith (How to Cheat at Cooking, 1983) Rick Stein (English Seafood Cookery, 1988) Antony Worrall Thompson Phil Vickery Marco Pierre White Dishes Savouries Bedfordshire clanger Bangers and mash Beef Wellington Black pudding Bubble and squeak Cauliflower cheese Cobbler Cornish pasty Cottage pie Cumberland sausage Devilled kidneys Faggots Fish and chips Full English breakfast Game pie Gooducken Gravy Jellied eels Kippers Lancashire hotpot Lincolnshire sausage Liver and onions Parmo Pease pudding Pie and mash Ploughman's lunch Pork pie Potted shrimps Shepherd's pie Scouse Stargazy Pie Steak and kidney pie Steak and kidney pudding Steak and oyster pie Stottie cake Suet pudding Sunday roast Roast beef Roast lamb Toad-in-the-hole Welsh Rarebit Yorkshire pudding Puddings Apple pie Bakewell tart Battenberg Cake Bread and butter pudding Christmas pudding Crumble Custard Eccles cake Eton Mess Eve's pudding Fool Gypsy tart Cornish Hevva Cake Jam Roly-Poly Knickerbocker glory Lardy cake Madeira cake Mince pie Parkin Pound cake Queen of Puddings Saffron cake Scones Spotted dick Sticky toffee pudding Summer pudding Sussex Pond Pudding Syllabub Trifle Treacle tart Victoria Sponge cake Sauces Chutney Horseradish sauce HP sauce Mint sauce Piccalilli Worcestershire sauce Cheeses Caerphilly Cheddar cheese Cottage cheese Curd cheese Double Gloucester Lancashire Red Leicester Stilton Wensleydale Yarg Preserves Marmalade