What's So American About Apple Pie?

the oft recited phrase as American is apple pie. But what's the origin of this patriotic slogan. First, let's back up and look at how apples landed on America's shores. Apples had been cultivated around Europe and Asia for thousands of years, but when European colonists arrived in the America's they found only wild crab apples, small sour, dry apples that aren't good for eating. Unlike some other fruits, if you plant an apple seed, there's no guarantee that the

resulting tree bear the same delicious fruit you ate. Apple trees tend to revert to their wild format. Grafting on branches from developed trees helps, and you also need pollinators like honey bees to grow the fruit. So although the original settlers of Jamestown brought apple seeds and seedlings with them from Europe and planted them in their new homeland, the first apples grown in America were mostly used for

cider rather than dessert. Now let's talk pie. It was only with the availability of granulated sugar through slavery and trade that dessert pies, including apple pies, came into popularity in America. Despite the apple pies common association with American pride, Europeans had actually gotten the whole pie thing down centuries before. A recipe for Dutch apple pie can be traced back to fifteen fourteen, and the English were so enamored with apple pies in the late fifteen hundreds that they even

came up with pie themed soliloquies. So who was responsible for impressing apples into the American mindset? That would be one John Chapman, also known by the more famous moniker of Johnny Appleseed. Contrary to popular belief, Appleseed was no mere American legend. He really did exist, and what's more, he planted apple nurseries around the turn of the nineteenth century throughout Ohio and other Midwestern states, and he sold

them at a tidy profit. Appleseed also gave away countless more seedlings to pioneers who set up apple orchards across the nation. He became legendary because he mostly walked estimates say, somewhere around ten thousand miles over the course of his life, all barefoot and with nothing but a single knife for protection.

He became a symbol of rugged individualism and frontier expansion, and in the years since the United States has developed a whole slew of truisms associated with apples, including an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and one bad

apples spoils the bunch. The phrase American is apple pie popped up in print as early as nineteen the eight It was being used to describe lou Henry Hoover, the first lady of the Hoover Presidency, and what a good homemaker she was, But it wasn't until World War Two that apple pies really became stamped into the American consciousness

as a patriotic pastry. By then, good apples had been common for a few generations, and the dish was thought of as homey and nostalgic, do perhaps to a popular song titled ma I Miss your apple Pie, published in nine and due to apple pie being the most frequently served dessert at American military posts during the war, it became a bit of a meme for American soldiers to tell reporters that they were fighting for mom and apple pie,

and boom, the apple pie became American. Given apple pies strong associations with America, it's perhaps not surprising that it's not really a homegrown American product, but something baked overseas and brought to these shores. But since immigrants are a key component of the United States, there's perhaps no but a symbol of America than this delicious dessert. Today's episode was written by Terry yr Lagata and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How

Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other tasty topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.