National Apple Pie Day

The first apple pie recipe appears in a late-14th-century English cookbook called The Forme of Cury, written by the cooks of King Richard II. Pies themselves are much older, the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians all made savory and sweet pies. But the apple-plus-pastry-plus-spices version that became famous is medieval English. Apples were native to Central Asia, spread across Europe by Roman times, and were a staple of British and European baking by the Middle Ages.

Apple pie came to America with British colonists. Apples weren't native to the New World, so early American orchards were planted from English seedlings. By the 1700s, American colonists were eating apple pie daily, often at breakfast, often with cheese or cream. Apple pie was a fixture of colonial tables, enjoyed from farmhouse kitchens to the homes of the founding generation.

The phrase "as American as apple pie" is younger than you'd expect. It entered common American usage in the 1920s and 1930s, crystallized during World War II when soldiers wrote home about fighting "for mom and apple pie." The pie was suddenly a patriotic metaphor, the comfort food that represented home itself. That association has stuck for 80+ years.

Today, Americans consume millions of apple pies per year. Apple is the single most popular pie filling in America, ahead of pumpkin. National Apple Pie Day on May 13 is the late-spring counterpart to the fall pie-making season that begins around Thanksgiving. A great pie deserves a holiday; here it is.

Four things that separate a perfect apple pie from a sad one:

Six varieties worth knowing. Mix and match for complexity: