Meaning
Used to claim that something typifies American culture, values, or identity - quintessentially and comfortably American. Frequently paired with other national symbols ('as American as mom and apple pie', 'baseball and apple pie') and increasingly used with irony, since apple pie is not historically American at all. Mainly North American use. Positive but easily ironic, since writers now often note the pie's English origins; strongly associated with patriotic rhetoric. Regional use: American English.
Origin
The dish long predates the phrase: the earliest known written apple pie recipe is English, from 1381, and the first recorded American apple-pie eating is Samuel Sewall's diary entry of 1697. The rhetorical link between pie and national character built slowly - a 1902 New York Times editorial defended pie as the 'American synonym of prosperity' - but the full simile is early twentieth-century. The earliest commonly cited print use is a 1924 Gettysburg Times advertisement for 'New Lestz Suits that are as American as apple pie' (Smithsonian, following researcher Emily Upton); other researchers have found uses from the same period, such as a 1928 description of Lou Henry Hoover's housekeeping (Priceonomics). The saying took hold during World War II, when American soldiers famously said they were fighting 'for mom and apple pie', and its print frequency rose sharply from the 1960s.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- American as apple pie
- as American as baseball and apple pie
- as American as mom and apple pie
Usage Examples
- The senator praised volunteer fire departments as American as apple pie.
- To longtime fans, drive-in movie theaters are as American as apple pie.
- The columnist joked that complaining about July traffic is as American as mom and apple pie.