When I grew up, my grandmother’s apple pie was always adorned with cheddar cheese. I drifted away from the habit (I could never find a cheese that was quite as sharp as the one she used) but never embraced ice cream on my pie (or cake, for that matter). In my opinion, who would want to make their pastry soggy on purpose?

As I moved around the country, I discovered my family’s apple pie “tradition” was not necessarily known elsewhere and I was sometimes met with expressions of disbelieve and even disgust.

Whatever your familial apple pie tradition might or might not be, I was quite interested to read this Atlas Obscura article that delves into the mystery a bit. Although a lot, I think, still remains mysterious.

Probably the most important thing you can do is to try a slice of apple pie with cheddar, followed by the palate-cleansing slice of plain apple pie, followed by apple pie with ice cream, followed by… You can eat a lot of apple pie that way and serve the cause of science! A win-win situation if I ever heard of one.