Regional styles
Regional styles.
Ten regional pies, each with its own rules, rituals and partisans. A state is shaded where a legislature, a harvest or a published record ties it to one.
No. 1Florida, especially the Florida Keys
Key Lime Pie
Key lime juice, condensed milk, egg yolks.
Key lime pie is a chilled custard of Key lime juice, sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks in a crust. Florida named it the official state pie in 2006. Where the pie was first made is disputed: Key West tradition places it in the nineteenth-century Keys, and a rival account traces it to a 1931 condensed-milk promotion.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Optional
No. 2Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Dutch country
Shoofly Pie
Molasses below, crumbs above, coffee alongside.
Shoofly pie is a molasses filling baked under a crumb topping in a single crust. The food historian William Woys Weaver traces it to a Philadelphia molasses cake of 1876. It has been a Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast pie since at least the early twentieth century, and the source of its name is still argued.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Never
No. 3Indiana, especially east-central Indiana
Sugar Cream Pie
Sugar, cream, a little flour, nutmeg.
Sugar cream pie is an open pie of sugar and cream thickened with flour or cornstarch and seasoned with nutmeg or vanilla. It is often called Indiana’s unofficial state pie and was popularized commercially by Wick’s Pies of Winchester. The Indiana Senate voted in 2009 to make it the state pie, and sources disagree on whether that made it official.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Never
No. 4The Upper South, especially Kentucky and Tennessee
Chess Pie
Butter, sugar and eggs in a crust.
Chess pie is a single-crust pie of butter, sugar and eggs, sometimes with flour, cornmeal, milk, vinegar or lemon. It is identified with the American South, where nineteenth-century church cookbooks printed it as chess cake. No one knows where the name came from.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Optional
No. 5Michigan, especially the Grand Traverse region
Tart Cherry Pie
Tart Montmorency cherries under a top crust.
Tart cherry pie is a double-crust or lattice pie of tart cherries, chiefly the Montmorency variety. Michigan grows about two-thirds of the nation’s tart cherries, and the pie’s home ground is the Grand Traverse region, where the National Cherry Festival crowned its first Cherry Queen in 1925.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: ExpectedMeringue: Never
No. 6Oregon, especially the Willamette Valley
Marionberry Pie
Oregon’s own blackberry under a top crust.
Marionberry pie is a double-crust pie of the Marion blackberry, a cultivar bred by the USDA with Oregon State University and released in 1956. Nearly all the world’s marionberries grow in Oregon. The Oregon Legislative Assembly named marionberry pie the official state pie in 2017.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: ExpectedMeringue: Never
No. 7Texas and the Deep South
Pecan Pie
Pecans set in sweet syrup and eggs.
Pecan pie is a single-crust pie of pecans set in a filling of eggs, sugar, butter and syrup. It appears in print by 1886 and took its modern corn-syrup form around 1930 through Karo advertising. Texas named it the state pie in 2013, and Oklahoma includes it in its official state meal.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Never
No. 8New England, especially Vermont
New England Apple Pie
Sliced tart apples between two crusts.
New England apple pie is a double-crust pie of sliced tart apples with sugar and spice. American recipes for it go back to Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery of 1796. Vermont made apple pie its state pie in 1999 and asked that it be served with milk, cheddar or ice cream.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: ExpectedMeringue: Never
No. 9Illinois and the Thanksgiving table
Pumpkin Pie
Spiced pumpkin custard in an open crust.
Pumpkin pie is an open-faced custard of pumpkin, eggs, milk, sugar and spice. It has been printed in American cookbooks since 1796 and has been part of Thanksgiving since the early nineteenth century. Most of the canned pumpkin in the country comes from Morton, Illinois, and Illinois made pumpkin pie its state pie in 2015.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: NeverMeringue: Never
No. 10The South; African American foodways
Sweet Potato Pie
Mashed sweet potato custard in an open shell.
Sweet potato pie is an open-faced custard of mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk, butter, sugar and spice. It is a pie of the South and a touchstone of African American cooking, especially at Thanksgiving. An early printed recipe comes from Abby Fisher, a formerly enslaved cook from Mobile, Alabama, whose 1881 cookbook is among the earliest by an African American author.
Lard: OptionalTop crust: OptionalMeringue: Never