The Surprising History Behind “as American as Apple Pie”

How a phrase that didn’t exist until 1924 became an iconic food metaphor

When I give talks about my book, people often ask where the phrase “as American as apple pie” came from. The answer might surprise you — and it reveals a fascinating journey through American culinary history, wartime patriotism, and cultural identity.

Members of my audience inevitably point out that apple pie is not uniquely American. Europeans were making apple-based pastry dishes long before the United States existed. As I discuss in my book, European settlers brought apple trees with them as they moved to America.

Most American farms had apple orchards, making apples a cornerstone of the American diet. People ate fresh apples when they were available, and dried apples the rest of the year. Apple pies were a common dish because apples were so widely available.

When Apple Pie Had a Bad Reputation

In On the Road, Jack Kerouac eats apple pies at diners across America. He rhapsodizes about how the pies improve the farther he gets into the Midwest, but American apple pies did not always have such a good reputation.

Except for a few months when apples were in season, pies made from dried apples were the norm. In nineteenth century newspaper references to American apple pies are largely negative. Humorist Bill Nye, in an 1885 widely printed speech about the Fourth of July, refers to the “kiln-dried, fire and burglar proof, wormless American dried apple pie which is now invading our happy homes!” In this case, inedible pies are a metaphor for problems with American democracy.

Apple Pie Assassination?

Another batch of satirical articles in the spring of 1881 reported that American apple pies were used in assassination attempts against Tsar Alexander II. The Boston Globe reported that “Among the many infernal machines employed by the Nihilists the American apple pie was much used. Four times in one week did the lord chamberlain detect this dreadful viand among the dishes on the royal table, where it has been placed by some unknown hand.”

The Atchison County Mail (Rock Port, Missouri), described the apple pie as a “desperate effort.” The “genuine American boarding-house apple-pie” very nearly proved fatal, but good etiquette saved the day. “When he [the tsar] attempted to cut it with a fork, a tine broke and allowed his hand to strike the crust with such force as to scalp his knuckles and destroy his appetite.” Clearly the articles are written in jest. The tsar died when his carriage was bombed on March 13, 1881, a few months before these articles were published. It’s hard to say whether they’re greater indictment of the Russian diplomatic situation or American boarding house food quality.

The Tide Turns: Apple Pie Becomes a Symbol of Pride

By the late nineteenth century, more positive views of the American apple pie appear in newspapers. One writer in an 1889 article for the Milwaukee Sentinel argued that instead of a national flower, America needed a national pie. As the author states, “The apple pie grows in every section of our beloved country, varying in thickness and toughness of crust, it is true, but always characteristically American. . . . Every true American eats apple pie.”

The following year, Queen Victoria reportedly asked her baker to make an American apple pie, a tidbit reported across the U.S. The Philadelphia Inquirer complained about the lack of detail in the report. “We are not even told whether or not the pie was made and eaten, and, if so, what effect it had on her Majesty’s digestion.” Hopefully it was one of the good American apple pies and not the boarding house variety.

According to the author, English know nothing about good pies, especially that American institution, the apple pie. “They have meat pies — merely to look at which gives an American the dyspepsia – and fruit tarts which are almost equally unwholesome; but of the genuine pie, with its flaky crust and its delicious filling of well-cooked, well-seasoned apples or other fruit, they are deplorably ignorant.” Note that although we don’t have the phrase “as American as apple pie” just yet, there is a strong association between apple pie and American identity.

Presidential Apple Pie

The strength of that association can be seen again in news stories of Theodore Roosevelt’s 1909 African safari. While British East Africa, an American missionary presented the former president with an apple pie. “We sent to a fruit farm and bought some apples so as to make him some real American apple pie, for we knew he might not get any at any English house. The moment it set before him he turned to Sir Alfred and said ‘I want you to know this is good, old fashioned, American apple pie.” (Kansas City Weekly Journal, Missouri, June 24, 1909).

A writer for the Beloit Daily News (Wisconsin) speculated that the thought of giving up “that great American institution, apple pie,” must have been “one of the most discouraging things about getting ready for the African hunt.” Fortunately, Roosevelt showed greater courage than most.

World War I and Apple Pie Patriotism

References to the Americanness of apple pie increased in the 1910s. The smaller than usual apple crop in 1913 prompted a columnist in the Pasadena Star (California) to write “Deprive the average American of his apple pie, and you may as well take from him his easy seat in the car, rob his home team of the baseball game through atrocious umpiring, or mix nux vomica with his coffee. He will mourn the absence of that apple pie and refuse to be comforted.” Cars, baseball, coffee, and pie – an all-American list indeed.

World War I only cemented the association between America and apple pie. As Americans were asked to conserve food on the homefront, one columnist wrote, “The food commissioner will take his life in his hands if he is so foolhardy as to attempt to abolish that great American institution, the apple pie.” (Brookfield Gazette, Missouri, June 30, 1917). Numerous newspaper articles told of Doughboys receiving slices of good, old-fashioned American apple pie at canteens in France or on their return from the home front. Despite France’s reputation for fine pastries, they had nothing on American apple pie.

The Birth of an Iconic Phrase

Phrases rarely enter language in an instant. While the Oxford English Dictionary cites an advertisement from June 1924 for New Lestz Suits from the Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) Times as one of the earliest instances of the phrase (I did find a few that were slightly earlier), the concept of apple pie’s Americanness had been developing in the culture for decades.

Even though the specific phrase wasn’t used before 1924, the idea that apple pie represented American culture was firmly cemented in the national consciousness by the time it finally appeared in print.