The History Of McDonald's Fried Apple Pie That Not Enough People Know About

McDonald's original fried apple pie has returned to the Golden Arches, but just for a very short period of time. As part of the celebration, the company built a 35-foot statue of a fried apple pie (depicting the cardboard sleeve and all) in Route 66 Park in Joilet, Illinois. After all, nothing screams Americana more than some apple pie during America's 250th birthday. McDonald's invited me the statue's ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside other media folk, and we got to ride with McDonald's archivist, Mike Bullington, who peppered us with facts about the handheld dessert throughout the trip.

The pie, like a few of other McDonald's main menu mainstays (such as the Big Mac and the Egg McMuffin), wasn't initially part of the menu lineup. It was added to the menu by East Tennessee franchisee Litton Cochran, whose wife, Jo, experimented with a recipe for the pie in the late 1960's. Eric Cochran, grandson of Litton and Jo Cochran (and also a McDonald's franchisee with nine stores), was on-site for the statue ceremony, and as he recounted to me in an in-person interview, "My grandfather recommended to [former McDonald's head] Ray Kroc that we needed to try a fried apple pie for a menu item for dessert, and so she [Jo Cochran] went to work for a few months, trying to perfect the recipe. They presented it to Ray, and the rest is kind of history." 

Cochran also told me that that fried apple pie, tested in 1968, was such a hit that it was added to the permanent menu nationwide that very same year. (Coincidentally, that's the same year that the Big Mac was added to the menu.) But one thing most people don't know is that this wasn't the only dessert McDonald's tested. Archivist Mike Bullington said that there were a few other items in the works, but nothing ever really stuck until the pie.

"Prior to the test of the pie, McDonald's tested brownies," explained Bullington. "We also tested a strawberry shortcake and an ice cream novelty called the Triple Ripple, which was a Neapolitan chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cone. It was frozen." There was also a pound cake, but the pie ended up being the real winner in the long run.

Later, the company also produced other limited-time pie flavors, some of which you may not even remember. Bullington rattled them off in rapid succession: "Grapefruit pie, cherry pie, pineapple pie, blueberry pie, pumpkin pie, peach pie, lemon pie, Island Pineapple pie, strawberry pie, strawberry cream pie, S'mores pie, sweet potato pie, custard pie, holiday custard-style pie, and I'm sure there are others." And one manufacturer has been and remains the sole supplier to McDonald's when it comes to all of them — Bama Companies, headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Another fun fact you can whip out at parties? The filling for McDonald's apple pie contains up to six different types of apples.

In 1992, the fried pies were swapped out in favor of a baked version with a lattice top. It's been baked until this current short run of fried pies, and I'm old enough to remember the disappointment when the switchover happened. It's not that the replacement baked pies weren't good per se. It's just that they were, well, baked. 

Pies were handed out at the statue celebration, and you can bet that I snagged one. The revived version is similar to the one I remember from my childhood, the exterior pockmarked with blisters, and the crust audibly crispy with each bite. The filling inside is as gooey and sweet as you'd imagine, filled with small cubes of apples along with a cinnamon-forward flavor. This now makes me a little disgruntled that this one's going away on the Fourth of July, as it's notably better than the baked version. (Some reviews of the pie, like at The Takeout's sister site, Tasting Table, do wonder if the nostalgia is doing most of the heavy lifting here.)

It's worth noting that other chains sell fried hand pies, like Jollibee, and limited McDonald's markets like Hawaii still sell fried apple pies. Eric Cochran did mention that it took a lot of asking to McDonald's corporate to get this to happen. "It's something I've been begging for for years for a chance to be able to do this. We've always called it Grandmom's apple pie, and we've always wished to be able to to do it," he says. And when asked if seeing the fried pies again felt good as part of his grandparents' legacy, Cochran explains, "I love just being able to celebrate them as part of this and honor them in their memory."