Fruit, cream or custard: each plays by its own rules
- Fruit pies such as apple, cherry, peach and mixed berry are baked with the filling inside a double crust, a lattice or a crumb topping. Their sugar and acidity let them sit at room temperature, loosely covered, for a day or two before moving to the refrigerator.
- Cream pies, including chocolate, banana and coconut cream, use a cooked pudding filling poured into a pre-baked shell and topped with whipped cream or meringue. They must stay refrigerated and are best within a day or two.
- Custard pies bake an egg-based filling inside the crust: pumpkin, sweet potato, buttermilk, chess and egg custard. Pecan pie belongs here too, since its filling is set with eggs. Refrigerate them once cool.
Key lime, lemon meringue and icebox pies sit somewhere in between; treat them like cream pies and keep them cold.
Crust is where shops part ways
The filling draws you in, but the crust is what separates one pie shop from another. All-butter crusts taste richest and brown deeply but are harder to handle. Lard produces an exceptionally flaky, slightly savory crust and is traditional in parts of the South and Midwest. Vegetable shortening is easy to work with and stays tender, and many bakers blend it with butter. If you are buying for a vegetarian, ask whether the crust contains lard. A well-made crust is golden all the way across, including the bottom, which should be crisp rather than pale and soggy. Fruit pies that weep juice through the lattice are normal; a gummy layer under the filling is not.
Regional specialties are worth seeking out. Pennsylvania Dutch bakeries make shoofly pie with molasses; Indiana is known for sugar cream pie; Key lime comes from Florida; and chess pie is a Southern pantry classic of butter, sugar and eggs.
The Thanksgiving pie calendar
- Late October to early November: most pie shops open holiday preorders. Popular ones fill pickup slots within days.
- About a week before: order cutoffs usually arrive. After that, you are relying on walk-in stock.
- Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week: pickup days, often in assigned time windows. Bring the order confirmation and a flat spot in the car.
- Thursday: warm fruit pies at 325°F for 10 to 15 minutes; serve pumpkin and pecan cool or at room temperature.
Whole 9-inch pies typically cost roughly $20 to $45, with nut and cream pies at the higher end. Slices run about $5 to $9. If you missed the preorder window, ask whether the shop sells frozen unbaked fruit pies; some do, and they bake up nearly as well at home with a crisp, freshly browned crust. Some shops also put out extra walk-in stock early on Wednesday morning.
