Apple (or Pear) Pie

"Pear pie vied in popularity with apple pie during the early days of our country." from Betty Crocker Cookbook, 1950 edition.

Notes from America's Test Kitchen on the choice of apples for pie, as well as other tips:

"In the test kitchen, we have found that it’s difficult to produce an apple pie with a filling that is tart as well as sweet and juicy. We wanted to develop a classic apple pie recipe—one with the clean, bright taste of apples that could be made year-round, based on apple types that are always available in the supermarket.

To arrive at the tartness and texture we were after, we had to use two kinds of apples in our pie, Granny Smith and McIntosh. The Grannies could be counted on for tartness and for keeping their shape during cooking; the Macs added flavor, and their otherwise frustrating tendency to become mushy was a virtue, providing a nice, juicy base for the harder Grannies. While many bakers add butter to their apple pie fillings, we found that it dulled the fresh taste of the apples and so did without it. Lemon juice, however, was essential, counterbalancing the sweetness of the apples. To give the apples the upper hand, we settled on quite modest amounts of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

If you are making this pie during the fall apple season, when many local varieties may be available, follow the recipe below using Macoun, Royal Gala, Empire, Winesap, Rhode Island Greening or Cortland apples. These are well-balanced apples, unlike Granny Smith, and work well on their own without thickeners or the addition of McIntosh. Placing the pie on a baking sheet in the oven inhibits cooking, so cover the bottom of the oven with a sheet of aluminum foil to catch a dripping juices. The pie is best eaten when cooled almost to room temperature, or even the next day."

King Arthur Flour adds 1/4 cup (85g) boiled cider to thier Apple Pie to boost the apple flavor.

Apple Pie Recipe

6 - 8 cups tart apples or pears, sliced
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon or Apple Pie Spice [if making pear pie, use cardamom and vanilla instead)
2 tbsp. flour
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 1/3 tbsp. butter
Dough for Two-Crust Pie

Mix together the sugar, cinnamon or nutmeg, and flour. Sprinkle the apples or pears with lemon juice, and mix lightly with the sugar and flour mixture. Fill a pastry-lined pie pan with the filling and dot with the butter. Cover with top crust and seal. Cut slits in the top to let steam escape during baking. Bake until nicely browned in a 425° F. oven for 35 - 45 minutes.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. A slice of American or Cheddar cheese is another popular accompaniment with either pie.

Note on choice of apples: A pie apple must keep its shape during baking so that you have something to bite into and don't end up with apple sauce pie. The best apples for pies include Jonathan, Jonagold, Winesap, Pippin, and the classic Granny Smith. All, excluding the fairly tart Granny Smith, have a moderate level of tartness, which will be tempered by the sugar in your pie. If you want sweeter apples, Fuji, Pink Lady, Suncrisp, Rome Beauty, and Empire will work well, too. You will probably want to avoid Red Delicious apples, which are popular for eating, but won't hold their shape in the oven, turning watery and mealy instead.

The Food Lab, http://sweets.seriouseats.com/, on choice of apples and how to have them hold their structure:

"Some apples just don't make good pies. They're too sweet, too mealy, too tart. They disintegrate when you cook them, they release too much liquid. Some folks suggest mixing two varieties of apple—one to provide texture, the other for flavor—but this never made sense to me. Say we combine some Granny Smiths with some Romes. What you end up with is a pie that's got nice firm chunks of apple interspersed with brown apple mush. Golden Delicious or Braeburns are the way to go, displaying the best single-apple flavor balance of all the varieties tested. The only problem is that their texture is not perfect.  They get just a bit too soft in the pie.

We've already learned that lowering the pH of an apple pie filling (that is, making it more acidic) can help matters a bit. Pectin is stronger in more acidic environments, which is why tart apples like Granny Smith tend to hold their shape better than purely sweet apples like Red Delicious. Many recipes call for adding lemon juice to pie filling for this very reason.

Pop quiz: you start with two identical batches of apples. One of them you slice, season, and throw raw into a pie shell and bake. The other you slice, season, par-cook in a skillet for a bit, then throw into a pie shell and bake. Which comes out softer?

Obviously the one that was cooked more should come out softer, right? Wrong!

Well, really, it depends. Cook a pot of apples on the stove too hot and indeed, they'll eventually break down into apple sauce. But cook them more carefully, and a pretty awesome thing happens: an enzyme naturally present in the apples will convert the pectin in the cell walls into a heat-stable form, very much like curing the cement mortar in between the bricks and allowing them to fully harden.

This process takes both careful temperature control and time. Ideally, you want to hold your apples in the 140° to 160°F temperature range for around 10 minutes before allowing them to cool. If you want the absolute easiest method, go for the...

Hot water pour-over method. This is by far the simplest. All you've got to do is heat up a pre-determined amount of water on the stovetop to a boil and pour it directly over your room temperature apples in a bowl. If everything is measured right, you end up with apples sitting right at around 160°F. Cover the bowl, let it rest 10 minutes, drain the apple slices, and you're good to go.

After ten minutes in the bowl, your slices will have softened ever so slightly, but still retain most of their form. After this point, even if you bake them into a pie, they still pretty much retain their basic shape and a bit of pleasant al dente firmness."