United States Pies With Delish Dessert Recipes: From Pumpkin Pie to the Tangy Key Lime Pie

The US occupies half the population when it comes to pies and their most delicious dessert recipes. The country claims to fame for the most number of the world’s pies, so we’ll begin with the giant who revels in their pies. Before we dig in, what exactly is a pie? It is basically a baked dish that has a pastry crust pressed to the bottom with different fillings from fruits to creme and almost always has a lid-like dough forming the top crust. So, let’s take a tour of the Wild Wild West maker country and its warm pies.

1. Pumpkin Pie

You know this one, pumpkin pie is a staple Thanksgiving dessert in the United States as well as Canada that is a symbol of autumn, or Fall as they call it, and the bountiful harvest. Although it hardly has such significance in other parts of the world, some of the earliest recipes for the pie come from France, where it was known as tourte pompion. By the time it got to America, the name had changed to pompkin pudding, courtesy of a recipe by Amelia Simmons from 1796. The current version of the pumpkin pie consists of pumpkin custard, which uses cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg, and is baked in a pie shell while being adorned with whipped cream.

2. Apple Pie

Although England has a long history of making meat and fruit pies, and it served as the inspiration for the American versions, there is perhaps nothing more synonymous with American desserts than apple pie. In the United States, apple pies are found everywhere with its golden brown double crust, filled with cinnamon-sugar-coated apples. The apples that go into the pies are a source of heated debate about whether to use the sour Granny smooth green apples, the red and sweet Golden Delicious, or some other kind of apple. The most popular variety in the US is possibly Minnesota’s apple pie à la mode, invented in 1885, and served with a scoop of ice cream.

3. Pecan Pie

Pecans are something that is more loved than any of the nuts out there in the US and Pecan Pie is a hallmark of traditional American cuisine. Like every other pie, this too has a thin and buttery pastry crust with a filling made of eggs, butter, flour, and either of these – brown sugar, syrup, or molasses, and a handful of toasted halved or chopped pecans. When baked, pecan pie should have the consistency of a thick, silky custard with a caramel taste. It initially appeared in print at the end of the 19th century, associated with the American South, but today it is popular all across the country and an integral part of Thanksgiving Day.

4. Key Lime Pie

In the dessert world, especially pies, you will hear a lot about the key lime pie which is a glass-like, greenish pie with a sweet and tart flavor coming from the Florida Keys. The name comes from the use of the fragrant juice from Key limes, condensed milk, and eggs, cooked to form a custard. The custard is poured into a pre-prepared buttery crust made from the famed graham crackers and then topped with fresh whipped cream. A little about these limes before we move on – key lime’s scientific name is citrus aurantifolia, that is indigenous to Malaysia, brought in by the Spanish in the 1500s and cultivated in Florida since the 1830s when a botanist named Henry Perrine started planting them on Florida's Indian Key.

5. Cream Pie

Cream pie is another classic dessert that is as uncomplicated as it sounds which features a crisp bottom crust filled with a creamy filling and to kick things up a notch, it is topped with whipped cream. While their exact origin is unclear, cream pies started gaining popularity in the 1800s, gracing the pages of influential cookbooks from that era. Back then, the crust was made from a simple flour dough with lard or butter and the modern crust is prepared using crumbled cookies or graham crackers. Early cream pie fillings were predominantly vanilla custards or pudding-like creams, but these days, flavors like chocolate, coconut, coffee, banana, butterscotch, caramel, and peanut butter are extremely popular variations too.

6. Lemon Meringue Pie

The French will fight tooth and nail with the Americans for the claim over this dessert. It's made with a shortcrust pastry that has a tangy lemon curd filling and is topped with airy meringue that is often torched. The first version says that it was invented in Philadelphia by Elizabeth Coane Goodfellow, when she published her recipe around the 1700s. But, there's a but here, she mentioned lemon pudding, not lemon pie, with minimal use of meringue as a topping. The other version ties it down to Europe to the Swiss baker, Alexander Frehse, and also to England linking it to Dorset’s Emile Campbell-Browne around 1875.