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An apple pie is one of a number of United States
cultural icons |
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An apple pie is a fruit pie (or tart) in which the principal
filling ingredient is apples. It is sometimes served with whipped cream on top.
Pastry is generally used top-and-bottom, making a double-crust pie, the upper
crust of which may be a disk 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. |
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Left: Apple pie with lattice upper
crust. |
Cooking apples, such
as the Bramley 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.
English apple pie recipes go back to the time of Chaucer.
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.
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, as apples
do not come true from seeds. In the meantime, the colonists were more likely to
make their pies, or "pasties", of meat rather than of 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.
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Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the discovery of America,
"as American as apple pie" is a saying in the United States, meaning "typically
American". |
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Left: An apple pie is one of a number
of United States cultural icons. |
