They sprang this on me without warning, a kid from New Jersey, in a Boston restaurant when I was an undergrad. I had never heard of this custom before, and had no idea what the square of light material sitting atop my pie (in that dimly-lit restaurant) was. Extremely neat whipped cream? Cubed ice cream? I prodded it with a fork, and it retained its rectangular form, like a block of plastic rather than a dairy product. I sniffed it, but there wasn’t any characteristic smell. I pushed it off the pie and ate is separately.
I have an upstate NY recipe for apple pie with cheddar baked in. I love the combination; the sharper the cheddar, the better.
Yes, I came on to post this. I mentioned it to my (Roman) Italian teacher, and she was so disgusted she thought I was making it up to tease her. Frankly, I myself (a New Yorker) then backed down, thinking it was so unfathomable I must have seen it in a movie satire somewhere.
About jellies: I think (but hadn’t thought till now) sweetened jellies–made from the collagen left over from calf or pig bones and tendons–may be just a British thing, from way back, and then straight through to the U.S. Colonies. (19ty century jelly molds are lovely, eminently collectable, and quite expensive now: jhttp://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/kitchen/foodmold.html)
Savory jellies are in every European food culture, even the Jews, from calf bones: ptcha (which is a bitch to say) is still sold in NYC, but 9.99 out 10 delis have never heard of it. “Head cheese,” its more unsavory direct translation from the French–and which contains actual meat–would appear in SD’s “most unlike food by Americans” thread.
ETA: seeing above post I should have identified myself as a New York City-er.
Addendum on sweetened jellies: from way back, as in Middle Ages and Renaissance, sweetened jellies were pan-European. I’m thinking they just hung on with the Brits.
Good point.
A lot of what we’re talking about concerns, in general, combinations of sweet and savory. Interesting. (And I give a :dubious: to myself for sounding like Spock.)
Done in our family - my fathers side, that is. Mom is rumspringa’d Amish so we got slightly different traditions added in from her. My dad’s side has been here pretty much from the beginning [both English and Dutch, Dutch side was here since it was called Niew Amsterdam …] so I grew up with cheddar served with apple pie.
One favorite thing from Dad’s side was a habit of having slices of seriously sharp cheddar, sliced apples [sour, like Granny Smith, what most people would consider cooking apples] and a sweet glop like Major Grey Chutney [or jam, or jelly. Dad favored current jam.] Spread a small amount of sweet glop on the slice of apple, and top with a thin slice of the cheddar.
And I also make pear or apple custard pies - I cheat with the apple and use commercial apple sauce, but for pear I have to cook down the pears into pearsauce myself, but you simply swap in the same amount of pureed fruit as canned pumpkin, and add the spices, egg and milk and pour into the pie crust and bake just the same.
Speaking of burnt-tasting coffee…
Buestelo, if I’m making drip coffee.
I’ve been trying different Ethiopian coffees lately, after finding one in the office coffee pods at work that I quite like. Not acidic, and full but not burned or gaggingly dark.
Can’t resist homing in on this: calls up a reference in Herman Wouk’s quasi-autobiographical novel Inside, Outside. The hero, as a child in a strongly Jewish New York family in the 1920s, encounters two, shall we say “specialised” dishes from the “old country”, which he abominates. References from memory – I don’t possess a copy of the book – but IIRC one is “ptcha”, as above – the other he recalls under the appellation of something like “shchav”. Approximately, he remembers one being like brown snot, the other like green snot – looking back at a distance of fifty-some years, he can’t remember which was which, but recalls that for him, both were revolting.
Not meaning to diss “ptcha”, as such – it may well be a gustatory delight, and the picky juvenile Wouk didn’t know what he was missing.
I think this is what we call shaw or savory, an herb often used in flavoring soups and stews. I have a jar of it in my Russian pantry, and it has the consistency of canned spinach (i.e., it’s like green snot).
You sure you’re not thinking of sorrel?
I believe it’s called that as well. The Russian word is shchavel’. I have packets of the dried herb labeled shaw and savory.
Not even if it tastes like moldy vanilla? :dubious: 
I always loves posts like these, that over-generalize about “Americans”, and are also mostly wrong.
I’m saying the coffee is bad for some other reason.
I am female, born and raised in California, and I like biscuits and gravy. One of the things I miss about my background-actor days were the on-set meals; it was always a treat to be sent to breakfast and discover that catering had biscuits and gravy, though the gravy was never quite peppery enough and usually a bit too salty. It’s cream gravy with sausage, something I would never make at home, but yummy.
OK, in English they are two quite different things. Sorrel is a spinach-like plant whose leaves are slightly sour and used as a vegetable. Savory is an herb with small narrow leaves (somewhat like rosemary or tarragon).It is used fresh or dried to flavor foods, not eaten on its own (unlike sorrel). It is probably most well known being paired with beans (and is sometimes nicknamed “the bean herb.”)
“Shaw” I simply have never heard of, but the dictionary tells me it’s a either a British or specifically Scottish dialect word meaning the stalks and greens of a cultivated root vegetable, like potatoes or turnips.
- American cheese (orange butter)
- American chocolate (brown butter)
- A high % of bread in America is spongy and nasty. A “sub” is like a wet baguette.
- Beer from the big breweries is…
- drip coffee in 99% of the eateries is old and weak. Places that sell a decent cup of coffee can’t do tea.
[Voice of Johnny Carson] I did **not **know that!
Ignorance fought! 
Actually, it looks like sorrel can be used as an herb (and some varieties do seem to have a bit smaller, thinner leaves), according to Wikipedia, but I’ve only encountered it as a vegetable green, like in sorrel soup (I just noticed that in Polish, the word for sorrel is szczaw, which looks the same root as the Russian word.) “Savory” appears to be “chaber/чабер” in Russian.
It’s true: Americans like to drink bad coffee