Ask Lemmy

I mean, other places have had them. I wonder what they did that they don't anymore....

That'd work!

There are fancy restaurants in London specialising in almost anything.

Hmm. I'm in the US, but I think my favorite style is the Dutch style, which has that streusel topping with brown sugar and cinnamon.

That being said, I don't know whether Dutch apple pie actually originated in the Netherlands.

kagis

Hmm. Well, I don't see anything that clearly indicates that, though it looks like the Dutch did make apple pie without strusel topping, at least at one point:

https://www.historicalcookingclasses.com/oldest-dutch-apple-pie/

The first printed Dutch cookbook appears in 1514 in Brussels . It is called Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (a notable book of cookery). It is filled with many tasty recipes involving the use of luxurious products, and it also has a great apple pie recipe. The apples are richly seasoned and cooked in a luscious layer of dough. The spices used to season these apples are the most expensive ingredients in the 16th century. Back then, this was a pie that was only eaten by the richest people in town. Nowadays, everyone can enjoy it.

investigates further

https://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Regardless-of-true-origin-Dutch-apple-pie-a-6652475.php

These guys think that what we call Dutch apple pie in the US may be actually a development in the US fusing various European dishes:

Many pies will grace the Thanksgiving buffet today, and perhaps one of them is a Dutch apple pie, topped with a buttery, crumble crust laced with chopped walnuts.

The name Dutch, however, is a bit of a modern-day misnomer.

The etymology of these names have historic roots that pervade the ties of colonialism in the New World and old European traditions. The term Dutch, now used specifically to identify people from The Netherlands, was once used interchangeably to describe people from both Germany and The Netherlands.

The Dutch and Germans each had their own version of an apple pie that would include a lattice crust or be more cake-like in consistency.

"Dutch apple pie is not Dutch. Our 'appeltaart' is either more cake-like or made with a buttery crust," says Peter Rose, a food historian and author specializing in Dutch cuisine.

But where did Dutch apple pie originate, and why the walnuts?

"The Netherlands certainly has walnuts and perhaps adding those makes it Dutch. In his book of 1655, Adriaen van der Donck remarks on the quality of the walnuts here. The Dutch are and were very fond of nuts. In New Netherland (the Dutch American colonies), it was customary to offer 'nuts ready cracked' to visitors," says Rose.

Black walnut trees grew with abundance in the Northeast — one of the few sources of nuts — and the American ideal of "make it do," paired with the availability of the nuts, apples, sugar (thanks to triangle trade stops in Albany, where rum was made for British bastions in New York and western Massachusetts) easily led to pie (which was more of a breakfast food at the time.)

Beyond that, dairy farming as an industry didn't begin in America until the 1800s, and butter was used sparingly. (Many apple pie recipes from the time will call for a touch of cream, but not butter.) Making a simple strudel of sugar and walnuts, a technique long employed in Europe, could replace the top crust and save the precious golden butter for other uses.

As New York settlers began to move into Pennsylvania, they took with them the habit of crumb toppings on pie. In her book, "The Lost Art of Pie Making," Barbara Swell lists various Pennsylvania Dutch pies with crumb toppings (like shoefly, vanilla custard and sour cherry), stating that most of the original pies in the area are the unique cake-pie combination Germans were known for.

Many of the settlers in that area were also French Huguenots, who brought with them a tendency toward flakier, crispy doughs and crusts that we associate with pie today. The claim can be made that modern Dutch apple pie actually has French-colonist-in-Pennsylvania origins.

Hmm. So maybe Dutch apple pie derives from a dish that started in England, has a crust from France, a cake crumb topping from Germany...but that the fusion probably happened in the US, maybe in part due to limited availability of butter in the early US. So at least my favorite form of apple pie probably was developed in the US, though it was a fusion of various European dishes.