Apple Pie

Apple pie is a dessert made by enclosing apples in pastry and baking them. As it bakes, the apples soften, and their aroma and juices spread inside the pastry. Styles include the double crust, which encloses the filling with a bottom and a top, the lattice top and the crumb topping, and fillings range from raw apples that are cut and packed in to apples that are stewed and strained. Countries also differ in how they choose their apples and how they enclose the juicy filling.

Apples shrink when baked

Tart apples that hold their shape and soft apples that break down when cooked produce fillings of different density after baking. Besides using a single variety, bakers can also combine several varieties that differ in flavor and in how they turn out when cooked. Cutting the pieces to a uniform size is also necessary for even cooking.

If raw fruit is piled high, the apples shrink as they cook, and a gap can form between them and the top crust, which has already set. Lightly cooking the filling before it goes into the pie makes the apples shrink beforehand, so the finished height is easier to predict. When raw apples are used, the amount of fruit and how it is cut are adjusted so that the pastry also bakes through properly.

The bottom and the top bake differently

For American-style pastry, a common method is to mix cold butter or shortening into flour and bring the dough together by adding liquid. Some recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) combine the flavor of butter with the ease of handling of shortening. The pastry is not necessarily made like laminated puff pastry, by folding regular layers of fat over and over.

The bottom crust covers not only the base of the pan but also its sides, so it must be rolled out larger than the top. This difference in area is a factor in recipes that do not divide the dough equally by weight between top and bottom. While the juices of the filling dampen the bottom, the top browns first, so the brown color of the surface alone cannot tell you whether the whole pie is baked.

Check that the juices are bubbling well, that the apples are suitably tender, and that the bottom crust is baked through. If only the top colors too early, a cover is used. There are also methods such as thickening the juices with flour or starch and baking the bottom crust first, chosen to suit the pan and the filling.

When the top is covered with a single sheet of pastry, steam vents are made by pricking it with a fork or cutting slits. With a lattice top, the spaces between the strips of pastry serve as openings. Surface patterns not only change the look but also let out moisture heated inside.

The filling continues to change after baking. Hot juices flow easily and thicken as the pie cools, so cutting it right after baking can make the filling run out. Even when it is to be served as a warm plated dessert, cooling the pie thoroughly first, cutting it, and then rewarming a slice helps the slice keep its shape.

Spices, sweeteners and keeping the apple peel

Besides pies with a strong note of cinnamon, there are also pies centered on the aroma of apples and boiled cider. The choice of white or brown sugar, and of peeling the apples or leaving the peel on, changes the color, the aroma and the chew of the fruit. Combining unpeeled fruit with brown sugar, boiled cider, a little cinnamon and cream adds the richness of cream to the texture of the peel. In Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, apple pies differ from shop to shop in sweetness, tartness and the strength of the cinnamon. Even with apples from the same growing area, the flavor changes with the combination of varieties and how the spices are used.

Dutch appeltaart, baked in a deep pan

Some Dutch appeltaarten have a sweet pastry dough lining the bottom and sides of a deep round pan, generously filled with apples. The apples are combined with cinnamon, sugar and raisins, and breadcrumbs sprinkled on the bottom absorb the juices. A lattice top of crossed strips made from the remaining dough holds down the thick layer of fruit from above. Serving it with whipped cream is also popular.

In appelkruimeltaart, crumbs of fat, flour and sugar are scattered over the top. The crumbs are not joined into a single sheet; they are baked to a golden color with large and small pieces left as they are. Some recipes make the dough lining the bottom and sides and the crumb topping to different formulas, and simply switching the top from a lattice to crumbs changes the layer the teeth meet first.

Ideas for fruit and fillings preserved in old cookbooks

“Tartys in Applis,” in an English culinary record from 1381, combines apples with figs, raisins and pears and uses spices and saffron. It is a short recipe for baking chopped fruit in a pastry case, preserved in the appendix of an edited collection of old cookbooks published by Samuel Pegge in the 18th century.

In “Appeltaerten,” from the Dutch book “Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen,” soft apples that break down when cooked are peeled and cored, packed in, and covered with a lid of the same dough. After baking, the center of the lid is cut out, the filling is broken up and mixed with spices and cream, and the tart is returned to the oven once more. This sequence, which builds the seasoning into the middle of the baking process, differs greatly from methods that combine everything at the start.

Amelia Simmons’s 1796 “American Cookery” contains a recipe that adds lemon peel, cinnamon, mace, rosewater and sugar to apples that have been stewed and strained. Smooth fillings, not only thick slices of fruit, have long been an option.

Nor was it only fruit in season that went into pies. In early 19th-century New England, apples were stored in barrels and also dried for pies. Using preserved fruit for the filling meant pies could be baked even after the autumn harvest was over. The US Army cookbook “The Army Cook” likewise lists dried apples and canned apples as ingredients alongside fresh apples. Dried apples require a rehydration step, so even in the same double-crust pie, the condition of the fruit differs from that of fresh slices.

How an imported dessert became an American symbol

English and Dutch fruit pie techniques traveled to the colonies, where they changed to suit the apples grown there, fruit that could be preserved, readily available lard and other conditions. In late 19th-century American newspapers, a fondness for pie was linked to domestic norms, while in 1902 pie was also criticized as a food that damaged health.

An 1895 newspaper treated whether immigrants liked pie as a kind of litmus test of “Americanization.” In a 1918 Boston editorial, soldiers’ longing for pie overseas was linked to freedom and democracy. The phrase “as American as apple pie” appears in a 1924 menswear advertisement in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The ad used the phrase to sell American-style clothing as opposed to British-style clothing. The homemade dessert, once treated as a measure of immigrants’ “Americanization,” also became a metaphor for the nation.

Serving it with cream, working in cheddar

One British recipe serves warm apple pie with custard and cooled pie with thick cream. In this way of eating it, a milk-based sauce is poured over the pastry and fruit. In the United States there is also “à la mode,” with a scoop of ice cream on the side. Besides serving cold ice cream with warm pie, there are also methods that add dairy to the pastry or the filling.

Some versions pair the sweet fruit with the saltiness of cheddar. Sally McKenney’s recipe folds grated cheddar into pastry made with cold butter and also adds it to the apples inside. It is a pie that layers the saltiness of cheese over the sweetness and tartness of the fruit.

Mock apple pie, made without apples

Mock apple pie is a dessert that uses crackers instead of apples to imitate apple pie. In the Littleton Museum’s recreated recipe, crushed crackers are soaked in water, combined with apple cider vinegar, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and enclosed between top and bottom crusts. The apple cider vinegar provides tartness, the cinnamon and nutmeg provide aroma, and the water-soaked crackers form a soft filling.

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