My son and his girlfriend came home from college this weekend because they are on fall break. His girlfriend made a wonderful Apple Pie complete with the lattice crust and little bits cut to look like flowers. It was amazing from the look to the taste. She told us the secret is a bit of caramel.
Anyway, she said that my son told her that I do something really strange with my pie. When I grew up we often put cheese on the pie and let it melt. Sometimes just cheese, sometimes vanilla ice cream, sometimes both. It is always a yellow cheese… American, Cheddar, Colby, Colby Jack, whatever. I always thought this was perfectly normal but now I’m starting to doubt myself.
My wife from Wisconsin had never heard of it and they put cheese on everything. The girlfriend from Minnesota thought it was unusual (she was very polite about it though), and obviously my own son thinks it is strange.
Cheese with sliced apples is considered normal… does anyone else melt cheese over their apple pie?
I do it. It isn’t a family thing, though; I don’t recall where I picked it up. But it is certainly divine. My favorite is just your basic American cheese single slice, nuked for about 30 seconds on the slice of pie.
ETA: I recently saw cheese flavored ice cream in the grocery store. I presume for people who like both cheese and ice cream on their apple pie.
Cheese on apple pie is a New England and Pennsylvania thing, and predates the common availability of ice cream. Back when apple cultivars were hard and not very sweet and cinnamon was a rarity, sharp cheddar cheese was a good way to flavor up apple pie.
Not necessarily melted, but a slice of cheddar on apple pie is quite common around here. I almost always order it that way when we eat in Apple Country.
I think that’s an import from the East Coast when people started moving out to Los Angeles. It comes up a lot in hard boiled detectivd literature commonly set in LA.
Never melted, just sliced and placed on top, or on the plate with the pie. A nice cheddar with apple pie is divine. Or just the two cut up on a plate. We often plate up some Fuji apples and Cheddar, Colby and Muenster for a late night snack.
I sometimes have a bit of cheese on the side. Apple pie straight is my first choice. Apple pie with vanilla ice cream comes in 2nd, followed by apple pie with cheese. I also like uncooked/plain apples with a bit of cheese. Or apples with peanut butter. I’ve never had apple pie with peanut butter, but it’s now on my list of things to try.
Born and raised in Minnesota (I’ll be 64 in January), apple pie and cheese was definitely a thing when I was growing up, as was apple pie a la mode (with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top). Sometimes I would eat just an apple with a piece of cheese, preferably sharp cheddar.
I’ve also had apple pie with chunks of cheese baked inside it. Not as good as apple pie topped with a wedge of fresh cheese, though (IMHO).
If you’ve seen the Alexander Graham Bell bioflick with Don Ameche and Henry Fonda, you know that poor Bell and Watson were forced to live on apples and cheese while they were inventing the telephone.
Jim Gaffigan’s wife is from Milwaukee, and he tells of visiting her folks, and no matter if it’s after midnight when they arrive, her parents are pushing cheese on them: "C’mon, you have to help us with this cheese plate. We put it together just for you. Don’t go to bed yet, we have bratwurst on the grill to go with the cheese.
Spud, tell your wife to look up her history. My understanding is that Wisconsin had a state law back in the … 30s?.. that every slice of apple pie served in a diner HAD to have a slice of cheese on it, or on the side.
I assume the dairy industry was getting desperate; this was the same era that required oleomargarine to be uncolored, so only Real Dairy Butter would be yellow. But grocers would give you a packet of yellow food coloring, and my mom remembers kneading yellow into a big bowl of “oleo”.
I’m aware of cheese on apple pie, but I’ve never had it, nor seen it around here (Chicago.) And I don’t remember seeing it Wisconsin, either, where we go fairly regularly. I was under the impression it was unmelted cheese, though.
We’ve had at least one thread on this before. As I said then:
The first time I encountered cheese on a slice of apple pie was in a Boston restaurant. It was kind of dark in the restaurant – “atmosphere” – so I couldn’t clearly see what the lightish block of material sitting unbidden on the apple pie I ordered for dessert was. It clearly wasn’t ice cream – it was cut into a perfect rectangular solid with right-angled edges and wasn’t melting. I was dining alone, so I couldn’t ask my companions about it, and I’d be damned if I’d ask the waiter. I gingerly tried to cut it with my fork, but it wouldn’t yield to it. I knocked the alien substance onto the plate, where I could get a better grip on it, cut off a piece, and tasted it.
I’d never encountered cheese on pie before. Nor since, I have to admit, even in Boston.
