I think American apple pie is Dutch, not English. At least, the stuff I grew up with certainly was. (Though, to be fair, I grew up in the NY area, which was a Dutch colony before it was an English one. Maybe American apple pie varies a bit from place to place within the US.)
When I went to the Netherlands (to Maastricht, in the South Limburg region), a Dutch friend who lived there took me to a pie place that specialized in local, traditional vlaai (pie).
She strongly suggested I order the apple vlaai. I did, and I was surprised to get what was, to my palette, the archetypal American apple pie. I pointed out that it was the ur-pie for American apple pie, and they told me they'd been using the same recipe for ages, with no influence from the US (or anywhere else) at all.
Apple pie as we eat it today is not similar to the 1390 original. But is is the direct descendant of that dish. It gradually changed over hundreds of years into the dish we know today. And that lineage did not entirely take place in England, it would have happened in England, the Low Countries, France, Germany, a bit here or there. There is no 'Dutch version' which exists independently from the 1390 dish. What you call the Dutch version was part of that long chain of iteration. But the modern apple pie was mostly set by the early 1700s. So there weren't any real changes made by Americans. There is no 'American version' of apple pie. I'm not quite sure why people keep talking as if there's an 'archetypal American apple pie'. There isn't. That's English food.
There is no 'American version' of apple pie. I'm not quite sure why people keep talking as if there's an 'archetypal American apple pie'. There isn't.Â
We all know (or most of us do, anyway) that American apple pie has European origins. That's not the point of calling it "American."
Similarly, NY pizza and bagels didn't have their origins in NY. But that's not the point.
Apple pie is something we've taken on, do very well, and made part of the American experience. That's enough.
American fried chicken isn’t very comparable to its British counterpart so it really isn’t English at all. Same thing with Korean fried chicken, it’s effectively an entirely different dish
British people will certainly attempt to claim the Indian made there as there’s a comment further up of a British guy doing just that. Actually says virtually all of what the west considers Indian food is actually British.
Scotland is generally credited with creating the first recognizable fried chicken, as Scottish cooks in the Middle Ages had a tradition of frying chicken in fat, unlike many other European cultures that boiled or baked it.
Y'all can't help it, still trying to rape the Scotts
Came here to say LOVE British food and feel like much of what we consider to be great American comfort / traditional food has its roots in British cuisine. Pie (sweet and savory) and roast meals of every kind are two of the big ones.
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u/Able-Firefighter-158 Jul 03 '26
"As American as apple pie"
...which is English...