Fish Market Apple Pie

Ever wonder where a recipe comes from or what makes a recipe “original?” It may be a little like the game of telephone—you know, when a message is whispered from one person to another until the last person says it out loud and everyone laughs at how different it is from the original. Our pie of the month is a case in point.

Many years ago I attended a neighborhood function and brought a recipe that I found in a magazine—probably Bon Appetit. It was called Fish Market Apple Pie and at least two restaurants by that name have laid claim to it. Everyone loved it and the hostess asked for the recipe. I put it aside and forgot about it until many years later when I remembered the special apple pie that I had made once and started hunting for the recipe. I couldn’t remember what it was called or where I had found it and it was not in my special recipe file. So I gave up.

This last summer, while visiting friends at their lake cabin—friends that we had known in our first neighborhood so many years ago—I mentioned that I was doing a pie-of-the-month for my food column and I was looking for a good and different apple pie for October.

My friend immediately said that she had a wonderful recipe for apple pie that she took to everything and was always loved by everyone. I said that was just the kind of recipe I was looking for. She mentioned that she thought she found it in some magazine or something, and that she had changed it a little over the years, especially the name because it was unappetizing—Fish Market Apple Pie. Voila!

After refreshing her memory about how it really was my recipe (she was a little doubtful) that I had brought to her house so many years hence, she reluctantly gave back my “original” recipe. I can’t be sure what changes she made, but it is still totally delicious—maybe even better than I remembered from the first “original” recipe. If you like it you have my permission to pass it off as your own—but I suggest you change the name.

Fish Market Apple Pie

Crust:

1 ¾ cups flour, sifted
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
2/3 cup butter
½ cup water

Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt in large mixing bowl. Cut butter into flour until pea size. Sprinkle water to moisten dough; toss with fork and gather into a ball. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Roll out crust for 10” pie pan; put into pie pan and flute edge. Refrigerate until ready to fill.

Filling:

1 egg
1 ½ cup sour cream
1 cup sugar
¼ cup flour
2 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
2 ½ lbs. apples, sliced thin (I use Haralson or other tart-sweet apples)

Beat egg. Stir in sour cream, sugar, flour, vanilla and salt until smooth. Add sliced apples, stirring gently to coat. Spoon into shell. Bake 10 minutes. Lower heat to 350 degrees. Bake 35 minutes.

Topping:

½ cup butter
½ cup flour,
2 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup chopped walnuts

Blend all ingredients with pastry blender. Remove pie after 35 minutes (as above) and sprinkle topping over. Return to 350 degree oven and bake for 15 minutes more.

By the way, when entering cooking contests that require “original” recipes, the rules usually state that original means that at least two key ingredients and/or techniques be different from any previously published recipe.