As American as apple pie?
There is a saying I find very amusing: “As American as apple pie.” But, you see, apple pie isn’t American at all. Sure, it may be one of the country’s most beloved pies, yet a native creation it is certainly not. In fact, apples did not exist in America until they were introduced to the new land by Dutch and English colonists. Along with their apple and other fruit trees, they also brought recipes for richly filled pies that were passed on from generation to generation and soon became part of American food culture. And although it was probably the English who we can thank for making the first apple pies (the earliest recipe was found in an English cookbook dated 1381), it is actually the Dutch who are worthy of the aforementioned saying. Let me explain why I think it should actually be: “As Dutch as apple pie.”
I went out for dinner with a friend last night, and when dessert time rolled around, we had a bit of a laugh. It was late in the evening, and there were only two options: cheesecake and apple pie. Both of us went for the cheesecake, agreeing that apple pie didn’t seem quite right after a nice dinner out. We weren’t at a Dutch restaurant, after all, or one of those traditional ‘eetcafés’ where they serve simple Dutch fare, so we weren’t really feeling the apple pie, as good as it looked when I glanced over at other tables. “My ex-boyfriend always asked me to make him an apple pie for his birthday,” she told me. “Whenever we went out to eat, he always went for the apple pie.” I chuckled in agreement. Ask my Dutch husband what his favorite bake is and he’ll probably say ‘appeltaart.’ I love it, too. Don’t get me wrong. But if I have apple pie, it’s on a Sunday afternoon at home. And it’s one I’ve baked myself.
Apple pie – though not the traditional one with a lattice crust – was the first thing I ate when I arrived in the Netherlands on a rainy October day in 1997. My mother-in-law Miep officially welcomed me to her home (and country) with a small, triangular apple pastry called ‘appelflap.’ It was the first of many more apple pie experiences to come. You see, apple pie (and now I am referring to the thicker version served with whipped cream) is almost as synonymous with the food culture of the Dutch as their love for coffee, beer with bitterballen (ragout-filled, deep-fried meatballs), and their almost iconic breakfasts of ‘boterham met hagelslag’ (bread with chocolate sprinkles).
I can’t think of an occasion in which apple pie, or appeltaart, would be out of place. It is served with mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea, it does exceptionally well as pastry of choice at birthday parties and all other kinds of celebratory gatherings, and it can be found on the menu of almost every restaurant in the country. By the way, for the best, real Dutch apple pie there’s no better place than Café Winkel 43 on the Noordermarkt in Amsterdam. I have many fond memories of rounding off a stroll through the Saturday market with a thick slice of appeltaart and a glass of wine at this lively corner café in the city center. Their apple pie is everything it should be: thumb-sized chunks of firm and slightly sour apples, a buttery crust and a good dollop of whipped cream that isn’t overly sweet.
The first Dutch apple pie probably dates back to 1514 and can be found in the cookbook Een Notabel Boecxken van Cokeryen. It was quite different to the one we know today. The apples were baked under a thick layer of pastry, and after baking, some of this layer was removed and the hot apple filling was mixed with crumbled suyckercoecken (sugar cookies). These small cookies, not sweetened with sugar as the name suggests, but honey, were flavored with warm spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom. After the cookie crumbs were mixed through the steaming apples, a drizzle of cream would follow to give the pie a richer flavor.
By the 17th century, the Dutch cookbook De Verstandige Kock (The Sensible Cook, 1669) featured six different recipes for apple pie (accounting for one-quarter of all the pie recipes in the book) as well as a variety of other apple recipes.
In the Dutch Golden Age, apples were so beloved that even poet Jacob Westerbaen wrote about common varieties back then such as the guldeling and the aagt:
“Mijn guldeling en aeght, van liefelijcken aert (My guldelingh and aeght, of a sweet nature),
Die geven lecker moes en spijse tot een taert (They make delicious sauce and can be used in a tart)”.
Most apple pies in the book featured a filling that was either made of applesauce or finely chopped sour apples, as the sweeter ones were eaten instead of being used in recipes.
Paintings also attest to the appreciation for apples back in the Golden Age. Two beautiful examples are Pieter de Hooch’s A Woman Peeling Apples (1663) found in London’s Wallace Collection, and Cornelis Bisschop’s Woman Peeling an Apple (1667) found at the Rijksmuseum.
A century later, apple pies were on their way to becoming an integral part of Dutch food culture, though at first they were a pleasure mainly reserved for the upper class. It was during this time that the tradition of serving apple pie with coffee (also a drink for the affluent) was born.
Today, every Dutch household has their own favorite recipe for appeltaart, though sadly, in this age of convenience, many resort to the ease of ready-made mixes or the store-bought variety. My recipe is made from scratch, and I must admit I am quite picky. The crust must be buttery and slighlty crisp, the apples tart and preferably goudreinet (golden reinette) and the chunks shouldn’t be too small. Finally, to serve, nothing but freshly whipped cream will do. Oh, and of course, a nice cup of coffee.
Dutch appeltaart
Serves 8
Ingredients:
100g raisins
2 tbsps dark rum
300g all-purpose flour
110g granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
200g cold (plant-based) butter, diced
1 egg (or 1 vegan ‘egg’ made by mixing 1 tbsp flaxseed with 3 tbsps water)
2 tbsps cold sparkling water
2 tbsps breadcrumbs
1 kilo baking apples
1 tbsp custard powder
2 tbsps light brown sugar
2 tsps ground cinnamon
3 tbsps apricot jam, heated
Freshly whipped (plant-based) cream, to serve
Instructions:
Rinse the raisins. Place them in a small bowl, add the rum and allow them to soak for 2 hours. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and continue to press on the pulse button until the mixture starts to resemble coarse breadcrumbs or oatmeal. Add the (vegan) egg and water and continue pulsing until the dough comes together. Remove from the bowl and shape into a ball. Wrap it in cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least an hour. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C and take the dough out of the fridge. Butter and flour a 22cm-springform pan and line the bottom with baking paper. Roll ¾ of the dough (leave the rest in the fridge) out on a well floured surface to a circle of approx. 32cm. Press this into the prepared pan, sprinkle the bottom of the dough with the breadcrumbs and pop in the fridge. Peel, core and chop the apples into rough chunks. Put them in a large bowl and mix them with the custard powder, brown sugar, cinnamon and soaked raisins. Tip them into the prepared pan. Roll the rest of the dough out to a circle of approx. ½cm thick. Cut into strips of approx. 1 cm wide. Place the strips on top of the apples in a criss-cross pattern. Carefully trim the edges and brush with the heated apricot jam. Bake the pie on the lowest part of the oven for approx. 60-75 minutes. If the crust is getting too dark, cover it with tin foil. Once the pie is ready, remove it from the oven and place on a wire rack. Allow to cool before serving with freshly whipped cream.