By Isla Quinn
Height first. A Dutch apple pie is not shallow. The Dutch Table, a food blog, says a classic one stands a good 2.5 to 3 inches high, loaded with apples and raisins under a lattice top.
Not a pie, quite
America’s Test Kitchen, a recipe publisher, describes appeltaart as an everyday treat and a centrepiece of birthdays, baked in a tall, straight-sided pan and usually served at room temperature with plenty of whipped cream. The apples are packed in, heavily spiced and lightly sweetened. Raisins are often there.
The crust is where it parts company with an American pie. ATK says the dough is uniform, with the fat spread evenly through it instead of layered and flaky, so it eats more like a cookie: crunchy where it meets the pan, softer against the filling. It can be pressed into the tin. The top can be a lattice, or a diagonal criss-cross of strips.
The blog As Soup As Possible, written by an Amsterdam resident, describes the same thing in its own words: a high pie with a thick crunchy crust and a lattice that lets out a smell of cinnamon and lets you glimpse the sliced apples and raisins.
The spice
ATK names the blend speculaaskruiden, the spice mix of speculaas biscuits: usually cinnamon, cloves, mace and/or nutmeg, and ginger. It says many bakers simply use cinnamon. The Dutch Table also flavours the apples with lemon juice and speculaas spices. That shows how much a single word hides. Cinnamon only, or the full blend? Sources describe both.
Keeping it from going soggy
Two small tricks, from two sources. ATK says the apples can be part-cooked before baking so they keep their shape, and are ready when they soften and turn translucent. As Soup As Possible lines the pastry with breadcrumbs, to absorb the juice that runs out of the filling as it bakes. These are one writer’s methods each, not rules.
The 1514 recipe
Every source that gives a date points to the same book. Wikipedia says an early Dutch-language cookbook, Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (“a notable little cookery book”), letterpress printed in Brussels in 1514 by Thomas van der Noot, who may also have been its author, documents a recipe for Appeltaerten. That early recipe was simple, it says: shortcrust pastry, slices of especially soft apples with their skin and seeds removed, and more of the same dough on top.
Historical Cooking Classes, a food-history cooking school, calls the book the first printed Dutch cookbook and says it has “a great apple pie recipe”. As Soup As Possible calls it the first Dutch cookbook and says the pie is in it. Three sources, three slightly different descriptions: “an early”, “the first printed”, “the first”. We keep each wording and do not choose.
What the old pie was like
The cooking school describes a very different eating experience. The apples were richly seasoned, and the spices were among the most expensive things you could buy in the sixteenth century, so, it says, this was a pie only the richest people in town ate. In the late Middle Ages, it says, pie recipes were usually only about the filling, not the crust, and the custom was to eat just the inside. It adds that a liquid such as a sauce, broth or cream was often added halfway through baking.
Its own modern version, which it presents as a recipe based on the 1514 book, uses goudreinet apples and a mixed spice list, and the cream goes in after baking, through a hole cut in the top. That spice list is the school’s reconstruction. We did not see the 1514 text, so we cannot say which spices it names.
Side by side: the old and the new
- 1514, according to Wikipedia: soft apples, peeled and seeded, under a lid of the same pastry.
- 1514, according to Historical Cooking Classes: richly spiced apples, cream added during baking, and a crust that may not have been eaten.
- Today, according to ATK and The Dutch Table: a tall, crunchy-crusted pie with raisins, lattice and whipped cream.
Wikipedia and the cooking school describe the same recipe differently, one with plain apples and the other with rich spice. We cannot reconcile them without the original.
How it is served
As Soup As Possible says the Dutch eat it with the coffee break, not after dinner, with a plain cup of coffee, and that if you want to spoil your guests you serve it slightly warm and ask for it “met slagroom”, with whipped cream. The Dutch Table also says “koffie met appeltaart”, or tea, and that the cream is slightly sweetened. ATK says the pie is usually served at room temperature. So warm or not warm depends on who is talking.
A museum recipe
As Soup As Possible got its recipe from The Rijksmuseum Cookbook (2016), which it says has 130 recipes based on 50 ingredients from the Dutch tradition, with 900 illustrations from the museum’s collection. The recipe was contributed by a pastry chef. We name no chefs.
The American cousin
The Dutch Table’s author says they are unsure why American “Dutch” apple pies carry that name, and wonders whether it is the Pennsylvania Dutch, though that group is German. We have no source that settles it.
Dates in order
- 1514: a recipe for apple pies appears in a cookbook printed in Brussels, according to Wikipedia, Historical Cooking Classes and As Soup As Possible.
- 2016: The Rijksmuseum Cookbook, according to As Soup As Possible.
Quick answers
How old is the Dutch apple pie recipe? Wikipedia, Historical Cooking Classes and As Soup As Possible all point to a recipe in the cookbook Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen, printed in Brussels in 1514.
What do the Dutch serve with apple pie? The Dutch Table says coffee or tea and a dollop of slightly sweetened whipped cream. As Soup As Possible says “met slagroom”.
How is appeltaart crust different from American pie crust? According to America’s Test Kitchen, it is uniform and cookie-like, with the fat spread evenly, not layered and flaky.
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