Blueberry Pie

Ingredients

• 1 package (2 crusts) refrigerated pie dough (store-bought or homemade), or a double batch of homemade dough
• 6 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
• 1 tbsp coarse sugar, for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400°F (204°C). Fit one crust into a 9-inch pie dish.
2. In a large bowl, gently toss the fresh or frozen blueberries with the sugar, thickener, spice, lemon juice, and salt until evenly coated.
3. Pour the filling into the crust and dot with the butter pieces.
4. Top with the second crust, forming a lattice top, or cut several vents in a full top crust. Crimp the edges to seal, then brush the top with the beaten egg and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
5. Bake for 45–55 minutes, until the crust is deep golden and the filling is bubbling through the vents.
6. Cool on a wire rack at least 2 hours before slicing so the filling has time to set.

The Tale of Blueberry Pie

Story updated September 18, 2026

Blueberries are one of the few pie fruits genuinely native to North America, gathered by Indigenous peoples long before European contact and quickly adopted by colonial settlers in New England, who found the wild lowbush berries growing abundantly on the region's rocky barrens. The earliest documented references to blueberry pie appear in 19th-century New England publications, including an 1829 mention in The New England Farmer, and it soon became a staple of what food historians call New England's "pie belt," where pie was eaten even at breakfast. During the Civil War, canned wild blueberries were shipped south as rations, introducing soldiers from other regions to a fruit and a pie they carried home with them afterward. Maine, where wild lowbush blueberries are still hand-raked from managed barrens each summer, eventually declared wild blueberry pie its official state dessert, cementing a dish whose ingredients, unlike so much of American pie-making, actually originated on this continent.