Pie in American cuisine evolved over centuries from savory game pies and fruit pies brought over by settlers. By the 1920s and 1930s there was growing consensus that cookbooks needed to be updated for the modern electric kitchen. New appliances, recipes and convenience food ingredients changed the way Americans made iconic dessert pies like key lime pie, coconut cream pie and banana cream pie.
History
During the colonial era, handmade raised pies were made in the colonies with techniques brought over from Britain. The first cookbook of the founding era to include recipes for pies was Amelia Simmons's American Cookery. The 1805 Virginia edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery is the first published evidence of British recipes being adapted for a U.S. audience.
As settlers expanded into the Midwest Americans began making pies with wild American persimmon, chokecherry and other native fruits unknown in European cuisine. With the advent of tin production specialty pie plates became more widespread in the 18th century.
Women were responsible for figuring out how to make tasty pies at home, within their family budget. Transparent pies were practical and uplifting desserts made with just three ingredients: sugar, eggs and butter. In the 19th century as the nutrition science revolution was underway, high-fat pastry with sugary fillings gained negative reputations, including a warning in Harpers's Magazine in 1866, cautioning that "[p]ie in countless varieties...pie kills us". Despite this, pies remained popular, and in 1895 The New York Times said pie was the one food item common to all from "the first-class hotel to the penny stand at the corner".
By the 1920s and 30s pie recipes were beginning to be adapted to the now available electrical kitchen appliances, and desert pies like key lime pie, coconut cream pie and banana cream pie were created. Particularly popular in the era were pies made with meringue, including versions made with fruit (apples, apricots, grapefruit, raisins, etc.) and those made with sweets such as chocolate and custard. During World War II women used wartime rations to create "economical", "nourishing" and "thrifty" meals that could maintain morale. From this came desperation pies, also called make-do pies or poor man's pies, that relied on inexpensive ingredients such as sugar and milk and avoided expensive or seasonal ingredients such as nuts or fruit. Examples include chess pie, vinegar pie, buttermilk pie, mock apple pie (which used crackers in lieu of apples), water pie, transparent pie, sugar cream pie, and shoofly pie. Desperation pies had their origin in 19th-century thrift, and after the Depression were little made until they began to gain reputations as nostalgic.
Types of sweet pies Pies may be categorized by the main ingredient in the filling (e.g., pumpkin for pumpkin pie) or by cooking technique (e.g., custard for pumpkin pie, because the filling is a pumpkin custard). Alternative categorization schemes include historical era and purpose.
Custard and cream pies
Banana cream pie
Banana cream pie is a modified custard pie that dates to at least the 19th century. It was ranked the favorite dessert of the United States Armed Services in the 1950s. The no-bake pie filling is made with vanilla pudding or pastry cream, layered with sliced bananas and whipped cream.
Butterscotch pie
Butterscotch pie is made by cooking brown sugar with egg yolks, cornstarch, milk or cream and butter to make a butterscotch custard pie filling which is topped with meringue and browned in the oven. Its invention is said to date back to 1904, credited to a creamery in Connersville, Indiana, where the recipe was published in the 1904 edition of a Methodist church cookbook.
Buttermilk pie
A 19th-century recipe for buttermilk pie is made by beating sugar with eggs, then adding butter and buttermilk. The custard is poured into a pastry-lined tin over a layer of thin apple slices. To make a buttermilk lemon pie, eggs, flour and sugar are beaten together, then buttermilk and lemon are added. The filling can be made with egg yolks, and the whites used for a meringue topping. Some versions add raisins, nutmeg, dates or vanilla flavoring. Buttermilk pie can be flavored with lemon or orange zest, the latter garnished with chopped walnuts, currants and cinnamon.
Maple cream pie
A 1939 recipe for maple cream pie is made with maple sugar and scalded milk in a double boiler. Cornstarch is added to the sweetened milk to make a thin paste which is poured over beaten eggs, then cooked all together briefly then butter, vanilla and salt are stirred. Once cooled the custard is poured into the pie shell, served topped with whipped cream. Some versions are baked in the oven.
In anti-slavery New England William Fox and others advocated for the boycott of sugar from the West Indies to pressure slaveholders. Maple sugar became a substitute for cane sugar, first advanced by Benjamin Rush who published a tract on sugar maples in 1788, and soon after founded the Society for Promoting the Manufacture of Sugar from the Sugar Maple Tree.
Thomas Jefferson took up the cause, vowing to use "no other sugar in his family than that which is obtained from the sugar maple tree." He obtained 50 pounds of maple sugar from writing in 1790 to Benjamin Vaughan that high-quality sugar would be obtained from local maples with "no other labor than what the women and girls can bestow ... What a blessing to substitute sugar which requires only the labour of children, for that which it is said renders the slavery of the blacks necessary," but Jefferson's maple grove did not take to the Virginia climate and all the trees died. The tradition of making maple pie, although not as common as it used to be, continues to symbolize New England values of a simple lifestyle and economic independence.
Pumpkin pie
By the time Amelia Simmons had published American Cookery, the first American cookbook, in 1796, pumpkin pie that has originated in the UK had evolved into a form similar to the pumpkin pies of the modern day. American Cookery included two recipes for "pompkin pudding" baked in pie crust. While early pumpkin pies were made like fruit pies with sliced or fried pumpkin combined with spice, sugar and apples in a pastry crust, Simmons' recipe was for a pumpkin custard filling made with sugar, eggs and cream. The custard version of pumpkin pie appears in later cookbooks like The Virginia Housewife (1824) where it is made with brandy and a lattice-top, and in Eliza Leslie's 1827 cookbook where it appears as "pumpkin pudding". The pumpkin pie became a Thanksgiving standard, featured in Lydia Maria Child's 1844 poem The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day:
Over the river, and through the wood— Now grandmother's cap I spy! Hurra for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurra for the pumpkin pie!
Raisin and sour cream pie
This meringue-topped baked custard pie is made with sugar, egg yolks, sour cream, flour and raisins, baked in a pastry-lined pie dish until the custard filling is set. Some recipes add pecans to the filling, or spices like cinnamon and cloves.
Sweet potato pie
To make the filling for a sweet potato pie, sugar, eggs, butter and milk are added to pureed sweet potatoes with a little nutmeg. The ingredients are whipped and baked in an open-faced pie crust.
An article from 1903 compared sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie, saying of pumpkin pie "In its way it is very good, particularly if seasonings are put in it to give it the palatableness that it lacks. But we can not admit that the pumpkin pie is equal to the sweet potato pie, when the latter is compounded according to approved antebellum recipes." The article goes on to note the declining popularity of the "old-fashioned" sweet potato pie, attributing it to the increased availability of canned pie fillings and commercially baked pies.
Vinegar pie
Vinegar pie was one of the most popular Southern desserts in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and during the Great Depression. It is one of the desperation pies. These are homemade pies made with staple ingredients, usually eggs, butter, flour and sugar, though often even eggs and butter were omitted in lean times. Made with a small amount of vinegar sweetened with a lot of sugar, it was a very simple type of pie and inexpensive to make, at times when fresh lemons were a luxury.
Fruit pies
Apple pie
There are many variations on the basic apple pie that may add raisins, dried cranberries, or caramel candies to the filling, or replace the traditional pastry top crust with iced cinnamon rolls or streusel toppings like nut streusel or oatmeal streusel. Cinnamon is commonly used, and sometimes more elaborate mixes of spices that include nutmeg or allspice. Some recipes add apple cider, whiskey or maple syrup to the filling, or replace some of the white sugar with brown sugar.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, apple pie became a symbol of American prosperity and national pride. The phrase "as American as apple pie" has entered the popular lexicon.
Blueberry pie
Blueberry pie recipes are known from the mid-19th century, which is later than for other fruits like apple pie. One recipe from 1850 is made with just flour-dredged blueberries and sugar baked in pastry. Wild blueberry pie has been the official state dessert of Maine since 2011.
Blueberry pie filling can be made with fresh blueberries, sugar, thickener and lemon or lime juice. Vanilla can also be added. Sugar can be a mix of white and brown sugars, and the filling can be thickened with cornstarch, tapioca flour or all purpose flour. The pie can be made with a basic streusel or crumble topping instead of top crust, to which oats or nuts can be added.
To make a blueberry pie with creamy filling, heavy cream can be poured into the pie through the vent hole before serving, or it can be made with shredded coconut and cream cheese.
Cranberries, blackberries, orange zest, marshmallows, peaches or basil can be added to the filling.
Blueberry pie can be served warm with vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream or drizzled with a simple powdered sugar or currant jelly glaze.
Cherry pie
A basic cherry pie can be made by simmering cherry juice with sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a saucepan until thickened. Once thickened, butter is stirred in, then the mixture is poured over the pitted cherries into a pastry-lined pie dish and baked in a hot oven. Lattice top crust is a common choice for cherry pies.
The filling of a cherry pie can be made with fresh, frozen or canned cherries. A variation on the basic filling can be made on the stovetop by simmering canned cherries with water and cherry juice with a mixture of vanilla pudding, sugar and lemon juice. The mixture is boiled then removed from the heat and butter is added. Red food coloring can be used to give the pie a more intense red color. This filling is cooked entirely on the stovetop, without baking, and poured directly into a pre-baked pie shell.
Some recipes add pineapple to the basic filling to make cherry-pineapple pie. There are different ways to make this filling. A no-bake version is made by adding the fruit to orange gelatin and making a topping with crushed bananas and chopped nuts. For baked versions of the pie, the filling is similar to other preparations, with crushed pineapple added.
There are other variations of cherry pie, such as the cherry angel pie made by filling a meringue bottom crust with vanilla custard and canned cherries. This pie filling is not baked, but chilled in the refrigerator, and garnished with whipped cream before serving.
Canned cherry pie filling is also used as a topping for other types of pies like custard pie, ice cream pie and cheesecake pie.
Green tomato pie