Well, my go-to medieval cookbook, Pleyn Delit, has a recipe for “Tartys in Applis”.
(Measurements and instructions modernised by the authors – but they note in the book’s introduction they tried to keep to the original medieval flavours as much as possible.)
About 2lbs of apples
Optional: substitute in 1-2 very firm pears for some of the apples
About 1/2c dried figs or prunes, stoned and chopped
1/3c raisins
1/2c sugar (brown, white, or a combination)
1/4 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, salt
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Pinch saffron or tumeric
Pastry for one pie shell
The instructions say to use smaller pieces of fruit than we do today, but otherwise you’re just baking a pie. Those are more types of spices than we’re used to using in one pie today, but the amounts aren’t exactly off the charts.
While I know the average American recipe calls for more sugar, to be honest, with all the dried fruit included, when I finally get 'round to trying this recipe out (only made savouries from the book so far), I’ll probably either halve the amount or leave it out entirely. It’s true American baking (and yogurt,and a whole lot of other things) are more sugary than the rest of the world prefers, but I’m not sure that means the rest of us aren’t eating dessert.
As for the crust… they did start out as simply disposable containers to keep the filling clean in the oven, but they were eaten if clean and tasty enough. Certainly even nowadays it’s not unusual for someone to leave the crust on their plate.
ETA: the book includes other sweet fruit pie recipes, but they all also include custard. Not sure if this is representative or if they just ran out of space. There were far more pudding and custard recipes. The introduction to the sweets section states, “Most – if not all – medieval feasts ended with a sweets course.”
