One thing's for certain this Thanksgiving day: all over America, folks will be feasting on desserts. And what dessert is more American than apple pie? The long tradition of apple pie as a quintessentially American dish has helped that phrase develop the adjectival sense of "relating to or characterized by traditionally American values." And when "apple-pie" is followed by the word order, it means "excellent or perfect."
Apple pie isn't the only pie with a meaning that transcends food, of course, and neither is it the only pie to function as an adjective. A custard pie is a pastry-shell baked with sweetened milk and eggs, and custard-pie can also mean "relating to or marked by the broadest comedy; slapstick." Fans of slapstick comedies know that term has its origin in the frequent pie-throwing contests in the early motion-pictures.
For pie-lovers interested in avoiding both tartness and sweetness, we suggest a serving of humble pie. Originally, that dish referred to a pie made of the umbles or edible viscera of a deer that was fed to servants after a hunt. These days, humble pie is more commonly used to name "a figurative serving of humiliation, usually in the form of a forced submission, apology, or retraction."