Holiday Calendar

National Apple Pie Day

Next celebratedThursday, May 13, 2027

National Apple Pie Day is a reason to give an afternoon over to pastry and a bowl of peeled apples. Choose fruit that holds its shape, and eat the first slice standing up in the kitchen.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEMay 13
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYDesserts
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The oldest trace located dates from 2008.

No founder or establishing record for National Apple Pie Day has been located. The name returns nothing in Chase's Calendar of Events, nothing in the Federal Register and nothing in the English Wikipedia; the oldest traces found are two periodicals from 2008, and the earliest archived listing located that carries both the name and the May 13 date was captured in May 2011.

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INTRO

A Kazakh fruit in an English crust

An apple that collapses into mush is no use in a pie, and the trait that stops it is not American. A genome study of 117 wild and cultivated apples found that the fruit kept its size from a wild ancestor in Kazakhstan and gained its firm flesh later, by crossing with the European crabapple. National Apple Pie Day sits on top of that inheritance without mentioning it.

The fruit, the pastry and the phrase all came from somewhere else, and each of them arrived at a different time. The most American thing about an American apple pie turns out to be the habit of calling it American.

That leaves the cook with a genuinely international object on the counter. Pick a firm variety, build a crust, and you are following a procedure somebody in England had already written down in the fourteenth century.

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ORIGINS

Apple Pie Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 1780 the antiquary Samuel Pegge published a roll of medieval cookery as The Forme of Cury. Bound into the same volume was a second, shorter manuscript, headed Ancient Cookery, A.D. 1381. The apple pie recipe quoted every May is in the second one.

Pegge did not guess at that date. One of the tracts inside that manuscript ends with a line of Latin naming the day the writing was finished, and he read it as August 30, 1381, in the reign of Richard II. He added that the language and orthography accord perfectly well with the date.

CHAPTER 01

Figs, pears and not a grain of sugar

The recipe runs to one sentence. Take good apples and good spices, figs, raisins and pears, pound them well, colour them with saffron, and put the lot in a cofyn to bake.

There is no sugar in it, though other recipes in the same book call for sugar by name. The cofyn is the pastry: Pegge glosses the word elsewhere as pies without lids, and another recipe has the cook build one an inch deep and then cover it.

CHAPTER 02

The long way out of the Tian Shan

The fruit took a slower road. Apples were domesticated from Malus sieversii in the Tian Shan mountains, then carried west to Europe along the Silk Road, picking up wild crabapple ancestry on the way.

None of that survives in a seed. A seed from a Red Delicious will not produce a Red Delicious tree, and most apple trees are propagated by grafting instead, which gives growers trees that are genetically identical to one another.

CHAPTER 03

One tree on Church Street

Mary Ann Brailsford planted apple pips in a garden on Church Street in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, some time between 1809 and 1815. What came up is the original Bramley tree, and it is still there.

Nottingham Trent University has been its custodian for years. In 2023 saplings grafted from it were planted at the American ambassador's residence in London.

National Apple Pie Day carries no paper trail of its own. No founder has been located and no establishing record has turned up, which leaves the day resting on the dish. The dish has been collecting documents since a scribe signed off his work in 1381.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A manuscript that dates itself

A tract inside the manuscript that carries the apple tart recipe ends with a line of Latin giving the day the writing was finished, August 30.

Richard II's cooks compile a roll

The Forme of Cury was put together about this year by the master cooks of King Richard II, and is a separate text from the 1381 manuscript.

Pegge prints both texts together

The antiquary Samuel Pegge published the 1381 manuscript and The Forme of Cury in a single volume, under the second title.

Apple pips in a Southwell garden

Mary Ann Brailsford planted the pips that produced the original Bramley tree, some time between 1809 and 1815.

Plant explorers head for Central Asia

From 1989 to 1996 the USDA's Geneva unit collected wild Malus in Central Asia, including Malus sieversii from Kazakhstan.

A genome map of the apple

A Nature Communications study of wild and cultivated accessions proposed a model of apple domestication running west along the Silk Road.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Apple Pie Day

GENETICS

US plant explorers went to Kazakhstan for the apple's wild ancestor.

The USDA's plant genetic resources unit at Geneva, New York ran collecting expeditions for wild Malus in Central Asia from 1989 to 1996, and calls the preservation of wild Malus a critical focus. The Kazakh material is living stock of the wild species the domesticated apple is thought to descend from.

GEOGRAPHY

Most of the fresh crop comes from one state

Washington put more than 5.6 billion pounds of apples on the fresh market in 2025, against 7.27 billion pounds for the whole country. A dessert treated as a national emblem leans very heavily on a single state.

MEASUREMENT

Federal law decides which apples get counted

The USDA's crop reports cover commercial orchards only, which the governing law defines as an orchard of a hundred or more bearing trees. Every national total therefore leaves out the tree in the back garden, however much fruit it drops.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Apple Pie Day by the Numbers

10.7B lb
US apple crop utilized, 2025
3.45B lb
US apples sent to processing, 2025
$2.82B
Value of the 2025 US apple crop
296,900
US acres of bearing apple trees, 2025
6,079
Unique apple accessions the USDA holds

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

The 1381 apple pie recipe is in The Forme of Cury, and it was printed that year.

The truth

Neither half holds. The recipe belongs to a separate manuscript that Samuel Pegge headed Ancient Cookery, A.D. 1381, printed alongside The Forme of Cury in his 1780 volume, and The Forme of Cury itself was compiled about 1390 for the master cooks of Richard II. Nothing was printed in 1381; the text is handwritten and reached print four centuries later.

The myth

As American as apple pie is an old American saying.

The truth

It is a twentieth century one. Searching the California Digital Newspaper Collection decade by decade returns nothing at all for 1900 to 1919 and two articles for the whole of the 1930s, then 47 for the 1940s and 441 for the 1970s.

The myth

Apple pie is an American invention.

The truth

The oldest recipe in this record is English and predates the United States by centuries, and the fruit itself was domesticated in Central Asia. What is American is the association, and it is the most recent part of the whole assembly.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Apple Pie Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Bake the 1381 recipe as written

Apples, spices, figs, raisins and pears, coloured with saffron and baked in a crust, is the whole of it. The original wording runs to a single sentence and calls for no sugar.

SHOP

Shop for firm, crisp varieties

Extension guidance for pie filling asks for firm, crisp apples. If they are not tart enough, the correction is a quarter cup of lemon juice for every six quarts of slices.

PLANT

Plant a pip and see what comes up

A seed from a Red Delicious gives a genetically different tree, and usually a worse one. Iowa State's method is 90 to 120 days in moist sand in the refrigerator, then half an inch deep in potting mix.

SEARCH

Search a newspaper archive for the phrase

The California Digital Newspaper Collection lets you run a phrase decade by decade and read what comes back. Try it on as American as apple pie and watch where the count jumps.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Apple Pie Day?

1 / 8

The manuscript holding the apple tart recipe dates itself. To which year?

Answer

No. No federal or state instrument naming May 13 has been located, so it is a normal working day. Virginia's code does set January 26 as Motherhood and Apple Pie Day, which is a separate observance tied to infant mortality.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources
9primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
Project Gutenberg1780
The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390
Samuel Pegge's 1780 edition, carrying both the roll and the dated 1381 manuscript.
View source
Nature Communications2017
Genome re-sequencing reveals the history of apple and supports a two-stage model for fruit enlargement
117 apple genomes traced to a Kazakh wild ancestor and a European crabapple cross.
View source
Commonwealth of Virginia1989
Code of Virginia 2.2-3303, Observance of Motherhood and Apple Pie Day
The 1989 statute fixing 26 January and linking the day to infant mortality.
View source
USDA Agricultural Research Service
USDA Apple (Malus) Collection, Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva NY
The national apple collection, its size, and the Central Asian collecting trips behind it.
View source
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service2026-05
Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2025 Summary
Official 2025 figures for the US apple crop, its acreage, value and fresh or processed split.
View source
Nottingham Trent University2023-04
Bramley Apple tree sapling seals Nottinghamshire's permanent friendship with US
The original Bramley tree at Southwell, its planting window, and the 2023 grafts sent to London.
View source
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Phrase search: as American as apple pie, 1900 to 1979
A searchable run of California newspapers showing when the phrase starts appearing.
View source
Common Ground
Apple Day
The organisation's own account of launching Apple Day in Covent Garden in October 1990.
View source
American Pie Council
American Pie Council
The trade body behind National Pie Day on 23 January, which also lists Pi Day.
View source
Additional coverage
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach2025-06
Can I grow an apple tree from a seed?
Why apple seedlings differ from their parent, and how to germinate a pip anyway.
View source
University of Maine Cooperative Extension
Bulletin #4038, Let's Preserve: Fruit Pie Fillings
Which apple varieties to use for pie filling, and what to do when they lack tartness.
View source
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