15 Easy Pie Recipes You'll Love for Every Season, Every Occasion (2024)

FAQs

What is the most favorite pie in the world? ›

Apple Pie. Apple pie is arguably one of the most popular pie flavors. A symbol of America, the apple pie was actually invented by the British. Apple pie is simply made with sliced apples on double-crusted pastry dough.

It took some time for sweet pies to catch on, but indeed they did. Time magazine states that a 1796 American cookbook had just three sweet pie recipes, but one written in the 1800s featured eight. In 1947's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, 65 sweet pie varieties were listed.

A Quick History of Pie (Savory and Sweet!)

Historians trace the origin of pie to the Egyptians back in 9500 BCE. In Egypt, the first pies were made with ground grains like barley, wheat, or oats combined with water. This “dough” was shaped into an oval and filled with savory ingredients like nuts, honey, and meat.

Apple. There are five states they prefer apple pie to other flavors. Apples came to the United States with Europeans. Apple pie has English origins, according to Smithsonian magazine, but the dessert is an American classic.

The least popular types of pies were salted caramel, gooseberry, blueberry and peach, all being the most popular in only one state each.

A pie's place in the oven is on the bottom rack. The worst mistake you can make with your pie is under-baking the bottom crust—it makes for a soggy, doughy mess. Baking your pie on the bottom rack will ensure that bottom crust gets nice and golden brown. Speaking of which: bake your pie in a glass pie dish.

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

This chill also prevents the dough from shrinking when you bake it and encourages more flakiness.

The Ancient Egyptians created the first example of what we know as pies today. Later on, closer to the 5th Century BC, the Ancient Greeks were believed to invent pie pastry as it is mentioned in the plays of the writer Aristophanes and it was possible to work as a pastry chef in this era, a separate trade to a baker.

A coffin or coffyn referred to a container made of pastry, a precursor of the modern pie crust, and food was served in the coffin it had been cooked in. The first printed use of the word coffin as a box for a corpse appeared later, in the 16th century. Historians trace pies back to ancient times.

What is the first ever pie recipe? ›

The first written reference to a Roman pie is for a rye dough that was filled with a mixture of goat's cheese and honey. The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve a pie case.

Though a recipe for apple-custard pie appeared in Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook in mid-17th-century England, the earliest written American Marlborough pie recipe comes from Amelia Simmons' 1796 American Cookery, believed to be the first cookbook authored by an American and printed in the US.

The word "pie" is derived from the Latin word "pica," which means "magpie." This Latin term was used to describe a type of dish that contained a mixture of various ingredients, much like a magpie collects a variety of objects.

Rather than the good old US-of-A, apple pie as we know it first originated in England, where it developed from culinary influences from France, the Netherlands, and even the Ottoman Empire. In fact, apple trees weren't even native to North America until the Europeans arrived.

The most popular variety in the US is probably apple pie à la mode, invented in Minnesota in 1885, and served with a scoop of ice cream on top. Regardless of the regional varieties and endless debates, apple pie is an American dessert like no other, best paired with a sweet Riesling wine.

The number one spot should be no surprise. Pumpkin pie reigns supreme once again, with 36 percent of American adults saying it's their favorite (beating out the next pie in line—pecan—by more than double).

“As millions of African Americans left the South for different parts of the country, they took their love of sweet potato pies with them, resulting in a national profile for a perpetually regional dessert.”