Apple Pie

Apple PieThe History of Apple Pie
Apple Pie is a tradition in both England and America. In England apple pie is typically made from cooking apples(culinary apples), such as the Bramley or Granny Smith as they are crisp and acidic and keep firm during cooking. The fruit for the pie can be made from fresh apples, use canned fruit, 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. A piece of cheese is occasionally placed on top of or alongside a slice of the finished pie, particularly in the United States and Great Britain.

 

The English Pudding

A 14th century recipe, English apple pie recipes go back to the time of the English poet Chaucer , the father of English literature. A 1381 recipe lists the ingredients as good apples, spices, figs, raisins and pears. The cofyn of the recipe is a casing of pastry.
In English speaking countries, apple pie is a popular dessert which has been around for 100’s of years, eaten hot or cold, on its own or with ice cream, double cream, or hot 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.
Sugar cane 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$50 per pound) in today's prices. So VERY expensive. The absence of sugar may also indicate that the medieval English did not have quite as sweet a tooth as their descendants. I add a little sugar to my apples to accommodate the American sweet tooth!

 

Apple Pie in American culture

An apple pie is one of a number of American cultural icons.
In the English colonies the apple pie had to wait for carefully planted pips, brought in barrels across the Atlantic, to become fruit-bearing apple trees, to be selected for their cooking qualities. 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. But there are American apple pie recipes, both manuscript and printed, from the eighteenth century, and it has since become a very popular dessert.
Apple pie was a common food in eighteenth 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.”
Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the European colonization of the Americas, "as American as apple pie" is a saying in the United States, meaning "typically American". In the nineteenth and twentieth Century’s, 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.” 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.
There are claims that the Apple Marketing Board of New York State used such slogans as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" and "as American as apple pie!", and thus "was able to successfully 'rehabilitate' the apple as a popular food" in the early twentieth century when prohibition outlawed the production of cider.

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