I’ve always wondered if it’s a geographical thing. I always eat cheese (usually a nice sharp cheddar, maybe 3 years old) with apple pie. In fact, I’ll eat cheese with pretty much any kind of fruit pie. However my wife, and most other people I’ve eaten pie with, have never heard of this and find it unusual (to say the least). I’m sure I picked it up from my mom, who is from Ontario, so I’ve wondered if maybe it is an east/west dichotomy (in Canada, anyway).
Do you eat cheese with apple/fruit/other pie? And if so, where are you from?
ETA: Do you eat it on the side, or melt it on the pie? I do the former and find the latter distasteful, but I’ve seen it done.
When I lived in New England this was common. I never saw it in California nor in the mid-west where I live now. I always understood it as a “Yankee” thing. Using the term “Yankee” in its most restrictive sense.
I like either cheese or ice cream, whichever I’m in the mood for (or if I bring a slice to work, it’s automatically cheese because ice cream doesn’t hold up so well until lunch. )
I’m in Alberta, and my Grandma does this. She was born and raised here. My Mom does this also, and she’s from Nova Scotia originally.
I don’t like apple pie all that much, but will commit atrocities for a good slice of homemade blueberry pie, which I will side with a slice of extremely sharp cheddar. NajaHusband finds this perplexing and had never heard of it before he saw me do it. I’m from the West coast, he’s from the East coast. I don’t know that I’d ever seen anyone do it, but was a well-read kid and I think I picked the idea up in a book somewhere.
I don’t personally, but people in my family do (or did), particularly my maternal grandparents. We lived in New York, but they were from Virginia, and quite Southern, culturally. So I doubt that is strictly a Yankee thing.
Whenever I can, I have a sharp cheddar with apple pie. It’s served that way in Oak Glen (the local apple orchard area, all of 15 minutes from here.) Melted is gross. On the side is marvelous.
My mom had an old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook when I was a kid (you know, the red & white check cover). In the Pie section, there was a picture of an apple pie with cheddar cheese slices on top of it. That used to fascinate me and I’d look at it and look at it. I’ve still never tried apple pie with cheese and I still can’t quite imagine what that would taste like.
It tastes delicious! It must be cheddar, though, and it must be my mother’s homemade apple pie. From scratch, baby, from the pastry to the apples we helped peel. (My mother has passed away, so the world has lost one of its wonders–she baked a damned good pie.)
Apple pie without cheese
Is like a kiss without a squeeze.
Gaaah! I got that cookbook as a wedding gift! Curse you, C3, for making me feel old. Oh, wait. I am old.
My dad (born in 1906) loved apple pie with a slice of sharp cheddar melted on top. He was born in Illinois, spent part of his childhood in Oklahoma, and came to WV as a teenager, where he lived out the rest of his life.
I rarely do apple pie and cheddar, but when I do…daaayyyyummm! It’s good!
I’m from southwestern Ontario and love old cheddar with apple pie. Melting the cheese seems wrong to me somehow, I’ve never seen it done. And the cheese is good if it’s a nicely aged old white or orange cheddar. Nippy cheese is too far removed from the sweet of the apples for me.
Hmm. I’m looking forward to going to the farmers market in the morning!
My sainted step-great-grandmother, who grew up in sod-hut era Nebraska and who could reputedly cook anything not still squirming, was a loyal, nay fanatical, devotee of cheddared apple pie.
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