A is for apple pie

"A is for apple pie. The nursery rhyme lives with us from our earliest years and culinary memories. As does the scent of autumn apples steaming in a pie; pouring hot, silky, vanilla-flecked custard over thick gluey-appled pastry triangles; pushing a clot of thick yellow cream on to the sugared pastry top with your fingers; or dropping a cold scoop of the best homemade vanilla ice cream over the summit, the hot beating the cold into melting submission.

"Apple pie is the alpha and omega of pies - well, at least of sweet pies - and there are, I'm sure, as many versions as there are cooks, but that is the joy of it.

"From cheese crusts and spices to crumble tops and gooky molasses-sugared tops punctuated with scrunched walnuts; from the plainest pie to the traditional winter welter-weight warmer, apple hat; from rhubarb and apple to apple and quince, apple and raisin, blackberry and apple."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"