Apple Pie History: From Medieval Coffins to American Icon

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

So, you sent us this massive stack of historical cookbooks, and like, agricultural records and cultural essays, all centered around the apple pie. And I have to admit, when I first looked at it, I thought you were just sending us a baking lesson.

SPEAKER_2 (0:17)

Yeah, you probably thought we were just gonna talk about, you know, crusts and sugar.

SPEAKER_1 (0:23)

Right, exactly. I figured it was gonna be a light, fun, culinary thing.

But as we actually got into the history you laid out for us, we hit this massive, glaring contradiction right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_2 (0:37)

It's a pretty big one, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (0:39)

It really is. I mean, you know that phrase, as American as apple pie.

You hear it, and you immediately picture baseball, Fourth of July parades. Maybe a pie cooling on a rustic wooden windowsill.

SPEAKER_2 (0:51)

Oh, totally. The ultimate Americana.

SPEAKER_1 (0:54)

Exactly. Well, it turns out, apple pie isn't originally American at all, not even close.

SPEAKER_2 (1:01)

It really isn't. I mean, when we start peeling back the layers of this particular dish, the folklore completely falls apart. The actual history is so much richer and honestly, a lot more complicated.

SPEAKER_1 (1:14)

Right. So today, we are going on a mission tailored specifically for you, our listener.

We are going to take a deep dive to uncover the true, global and centuries-long story of this dessert. And, you know, looking at this timeline, this goes way beyond baking.

SPEAKER_2 (1:30)

Oh, absolutely. If we just look at the recipe, we missed the entire story. This is a narrative about the dawn of global agriculture, really.

SPEAKER_1 (1:38)

Yeah. And economics too.

SPEAKER_2 (1:39)

Exactly. It's about medieval economics, the expansion of the spice trade, intense resourcefulness on the high seas, and eventually like literal cold war propaganda.

SPEAKER_1 (1:49)

Which is just wild to me.

SPEAKER_2 (1:51)

I know, right? Food is never just food. It's a mirror for human history. Okay.

SPEAKER_1 (1:55)

Well, let's unpack this. Because before the apple pie could become this American icon, we have to look at what it actually was when it was first invented.

SPEAKER_2 (2:04)

And it was very different.

SPEAKER_1 (2:07)

Yeah. If someone handed you the original apple pie today, you probably wouldn't even recognize it as dessert.

SPEAKER_2 (2:14)

You definitely wouldn't. The very first recorded recipe we have dates all the way back to, well, 14th century England. Wow. Yeah. It's from a famous collection called The Forme of Cury, which was compiled around the year 1390

SPEAKER_1 (2:27)

1390 So we are talking deep Middle Ages, like Richard II is on the throne.

SPEAKER_2 (2:33)

Right. And the filling in this 14th century pie didn't just feature apples. It was a really dense mixture of figs, raisins, and pears.

SPEAKER_1 (2:42)

Which sounds more like a fruitcake almost.

SPEAKER_2 (2:44)

Kind of, yeah. But more importantly, a recipe called for saffron to color the filling, and they didn't use sugar at all. They sweetened it with honey.

SPEAKER_1 (2:52)

Wait, I get why they'd use honey. Refined sugar must have been astronomically expensive back then. But saffron? Isn't saffron, like, still one of the most expensive spices in the world today?

SPEAKER_2 (3:03)

It is. And that tells us exactly who this pie was for. This wasn't peasant food, right? Saffron was a massive wealth signal.

SPEAKER_1 (3:10)

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_2 (3:11)

Yeah. If you were serving a dish colored with saffron in the 1300s, you were basically showing your guests that you had serious financial resources. But the part that usually shocks modern bakers is the crust itself.

SPEAKER_1 (3:23)

Oh, the cofin, spelled C-O-F-Y-N, literally a coffin.

SPEAKER_2 (3:27)

Yes. And it was exactly what it sounds like. It was a structural box.

SPEAKER_1 (3:32)

I kept trying to wrap my head around this. You weren't even supposed to eat this crust, right? I was picturing it like the medieval version of Tupperware.

SPEAKER_2 (3:39)

That's a perfect way to describe it.

SPEAKER_1 (3:42)

Just this incredibly tough, rigid vessel meant to hold the filling in place while it cooked, rather than the flaky, delicious, buttery crust we fight over today.

SPEAKER_2 (3:52)

Right. Nobody was fighting over a cofin.

SPEAKER_1 (3:55)

But why would they waste flour on something you throw away? Flour wasn't exactly cheap either, was it?

SPEAKER_2 (4:00)

It wasn't, but you have to think about medieval kitchen technology. Standardized metal bacon pans simply didn't exist for the average cook.

SPEAKER_1 (4:07)

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_2 (4:08)

Yeah, ovens were essentially massive, open fire brick chambers. If you just put a pile of fruit in there, it would burn or just turn to mush. So the dough was the pan.