Pear Crumb Pie

Ingredients

• 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust (store-bought or homemade)
• 6 cups peeled, sliced firm pears
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
• 1/4 tsp salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Fit the crust into a 9-inch pie dish and crimp the edges.
2. Toss the peeled, sliced firm pears with the sugar, thickener, spice, and lemon juice, then spread evenly in the crust.
3. For the crumb topping, rub the flour, brown sugar, butter, and salt together with your fingers until it forms coarse, pea-sized clumps.
4. Scatter the crumb topping evenly over the filling.
5. Bake for 50–60 minutes, tenting the edges with foil if the crust browns too quickly, until the topping is golden and the filling bubbles at the edges.
6. Cool on a wire rack at least 2 hours before slicing.

The Tale of Pear Crumb Pie

Story updated September 18, 2026

Pear crumb pie combines one of America's earliest planted orchard fruits, pears, brought over by English colonists in the 1600s and grown in Massachusetts before spreading, after East Coast blight took its toll, to the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s, with the streusel crumb topping introduced by German-speaking Pennsylvania Dutch settlers. As with other crumb-topped fruit pies, there's no single credited creator or moment of invention; the pairing likely emerged gradually as home bakers applied the same buttery streusel mixture, popularized through Dutch apple pie, to whatever fruit was available, including pears once Pacific Northwest orchards made them a reliable, widely distributed crop by the 20th century. Pear pie itself never became as iconic as apple or pumpkin pie in American food culture, and its crumb-topped variation has remained a comparatively niche, quietly persistent specialty rather than a dish with its own well-documented history, a footnote to two much older, better-recorded American food traditions.