Ok, so I got this from an episode of QI, which I truly love because it's got all sorts of interesting and hilarious things that I can share here. In this case, it was about the oldest apple pie recipe ever.
I kinda turned it into a game with my family and asked the three people I live with, my parents and my brother, about how old they think the oldest apple pie recipe is, and what the ingredients they thought were in there. I do have to preface this that I told them to not count the crust, since that wasn't part of the recipe.
Their guesses for times were things along the lines of the 1700's, the 1800's, and at the earliest, 1500's.
Their guesses on ingredients were apple and sugar/honey, but they couldn't come up with anything else.
The recipe itself is from around 1380, in a book called 'The Forme of Cury'.
(The following is just copied straight over from A Tale of Two Tarts, which is linked below. It's a straight copy over.)
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From The Forme of Cury: XXVII For to make Tartys in Applis.
Tak gode Applys and gode Spycis and Figys and reysons and Perys and wan they are wel ybrayed colourd with Safron wel and do yt in a cofyn and yt forth to bake wel.
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So, Apples, spices, figs, raisins, pears, and color them with saffron, then put them in a 'coffin', which could be a pan with a lid or made of pastry or something else, and bake.
Sandi Toksvig, the host of QI, also suggested that the baker might add salmon or haddock to the recipe. I haven't seen that in anything else yet, but that doesn't mean anything particular. It could just be them having a source I don't, or having gotten it by actually reading the book, which I haven't yet.
Some people reworked the recipe a bit to create it in more modern times, so you can try them if you want, but I'll stick to Mom's recipe. Nobody from the 14th century will get their feelings hurt if I like hers more. I hope you found this as interesting as I did.
Sources:
GodeCookery-A Tale of Two Tarts
What's Cooking America-- Apple Pie History
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