Other than maybe hamburgers and hot dogs, there is no more quintessential American foodstuff than the good old apple pie. Pop one of them into the mitted hands of a housewife, and you’re halfway to a Norman Rockwell painting.
Here’s the shocker, though: Nothing about its origins is American in the slightest. The apple pie was invented in England, which is basically the opposite of the U.S. Worse yet, the apple itself isn’t native to North America either. Sure, the apple might have grown to be woven into America’s history thanks to tales of famous fruit-growing freak Johnny Appleseed, which itself grew out of a requirement in the West for settlers to plant apple orchards on their new land. But that’s a long way from the way it’s talked about as an American meal, as if the Pilgrims showed up with handfuls of soupy sweet apple filling and dumped it into some sort of traditional Native American strange, sweet, plate-shaped bread.
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Again, pretty much every single facet of the modern apple pie comes from somewhere outside of the U.S. Don’t give me that “well that’s perfect because America’s a melting pot” horse-pucky either. It’s a cop-out, and you know it.
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Pies in general? Obviously brought over from Europe. We can’t even really claim that Americans were the ones who improved upon a subpar recipe, because that honor goes to the Dutch — and all the way back to 1514 to boot.
The classic lattice crust? Part of that same Dutch recipe for what they called appeltaart, along with using whipped cream or ice cream as toppings. The spices that are included, like cinnamon and nutmeg, are distinctly Eastern. In fact, there isn’t a single ingredient in apple pie that American can directly claim to have even suggested.
So, why is “American as apple pie” a phrase at all?
From my research, almost entirely because the New York Times wouldn’t stop saying it. In articles from 1902, 1926 and 1928, they referred to it as an “American synonym for prosperity,” lamented the lack of good apple pie available to troops in Europe and used it as a descriptor for First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. Clearly the Times writers liked how it sounded, and it seems like the rest of the country agreed, though there was little to no substance behind it.
Which, I’ll admit, is pretty American.