Apple Pie Spice: What’s in It, How It Tastes and How to Use It

In Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, printed in 1796, the apple pie got cinnamon and mace, perfumed with rose-water, and no nutmeg at all. Today’s apple pie spice is a ready-mixed jar of the warm, sweet baking spices, and cinnamon is in charge. There’s no standard recipe, so each maker decides what goes in. The simplest versions are three spices; others add ginger, cloves or star anise.

At a glance

What’s in it: three named blends

US labeling rules require ingredients to be listed in descending order of predominance by weight,⁵ so cinnamon is the biggest ingredient in both the McCormick and Spice House blends. Neither maker publishes its proportions. You’ll sometimes hear that cardamom is a usual addition, but none of these three blends lists it.

Allspice is a single spice, not a mix. It’s so named because its flavor resembles a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

Making your own

Start here: go mostly cinnamon, then add nutmeg and allspice in much smaller amounts. Mix, and taste a pinch in something sweet. Add ground ginger or a little clove if you want more bite.

Flavor

Apple pie spice tastes sweet, warm and woody. Cinnamon leads, with nutmeg’s rounder, slightly piny warmth and allspice’s clove-like edge behind it. Blends with ginger, cloves or star anise taste sharper and more layered. In a pie, the blend is there to back up tart apples without burying them.

History: what early American apple pies used

Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, printed in Hartford in 1796, has three apple recipes that show how cooks spiced them back then.⁶

So in that book, the pie spices were cinnamon and mace, not nutmeg, and rose-water did a lot of the perfuming.

Other stories about apple pie’s history get passed around: that English recipes calling for “good spices” go back to Chaucer’s time, that the dish came to America in English, Dutch and Swedish versions, and that nutmeg was once worth more than gold. We couldn’t trace any of them to a source, so we’re not presenting them as fact.

How to use it

McCormick suggests its blend for apple pies, tarts, crisps, baked apples and homemade applesauce; for oatmeal, French toast, sweet potatoes, fruit salad and mulled cider; for spice cakes, quick breads, gingerbread cookies and glazed nuts; for pancakes, waffles, muffins and granola; and in hot coffee or cocoa. It also suggests using the blend in place of cinnamon in baked goods. Past that, it works anywhere you’d use cinnamon and want more depth, from roasted squash to popcorn.

For a standard pie, about a teaspoon is a good place to start, adjusted to your apples. Taste as you go.

Buying and storage

The ingredient list is the way to compare one blend with another. No regulator or standards body publishes a shelf life for ground spice blends. Keep it sealed, cool and dark, and replace it when a pinch doesn’t smell like much anymore.

Safety

The main thing to know is about cinnamon. Cassia cinnamon, the most common type sold in North America,⁷ has much more coumarin than Ceylon cinnamon. BfR gives about 3,000 mg/kg on average for cassia.¹ The European Food Safety Authority’s tolerable daily intake is 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight.⁸ BfR estimates a 60 kg adult hits that with about 2 g a day of average cassia, and a 15 kg child with about 0.5 g.⁹ The EU limits coumarin in traditional and seasonal bakery ware labeled as containing cinnamon to 50 mg/kg.¹⁰ See Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon.

Nutmeg can cause poisoning in large amounts, but the National Capital Poison Center says nutmeg and similar kitchen spices aren’t dangerous when used as recommended.¹¹ See too much nutmeg.

Health claims

NCCIH says research doesn’t clearly support using cinnamon for any health condition, and that it’s unclear whether cinnamon supplements help with diabetes.⁷ We’re not making any health claims for the blend.

Substitutes and related pages

Pumpkin pie spice is the nearest stand-in, and plain cinnamon with a pinch of nutmeg works too. See apple pie spice substitutes for the ranked list, and pumpkin pie spice for the sister blend. Individual spices: cinnamon, cassia cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, mace, cloves, ginger and star anise. If a dish has gone overboard, see too much cinnamon.