I think there's a phrase that goes "as american as apple pie and
motherhood." Do you know who said this first?

I've found no "official" source of the quotation, but did find these
interesting tidbits:

"AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE - "America in So Many Words: Words that have
Shaped America" by Allen Metcalf & David K. Barnhart" (Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston, 1997) has a section on the subject --"1697 apple
pie." "Samuel Sewall, distinguished alumnus (1696) of Harvard College
and citizen of Boston, went on a picnic expedition to Hog Island on
October 1, 1697. There he dined on apple pie. He wrote in his diary,
'Had first Butter, Honey, Curds and cream. For Dinner, very good Rost
Lamb, Turkey, Fowls, Applepy.' This is the first, but hardly the last,
American mention of a dish whose patriotic symbolism is expressed in a
1984 book by Susan Purdy, 'As Easy as Pie': 'This is IT - what our
country and flag are as American as."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/1406.html



"Proud as I am of my American heritage and fond as I am of apple pie,
I just cannot stomach the expression as American as apple pie.  Almost
every temperate country in the world grows apples and eats apple pie,
so just how American can this pie be?  Does as American as apple pie
imply that apple pie was invented by Americans?  No, but apple pie is
really common in the United States and Americans really enjoy it. 
Well, a recent survey revealed that the most popular food in England
is chicken curry so, by these criteria, we could say as English as
chicken curry."
http://www.takeourword.com/Issue081.html



"Joe Franklin stunned his family at a Memorial Day picnic when he
announced that while he loves his mother and apple pie, he hates
baseball.

?I?m completely shocked,? Joe?s uncle, Lenny, said. ?To announce that
you hate baseball ? that?s just so un-American. And to do it on
Memorial Day, no less.?

Joe said that he still considers himself a good American citizen. ?I
still love my mother and apple pie,? he said. ?I?ve just come to
realize that baseball is awful.?
http://www.sportspickle.com/features/volume1/05292002-baseball.html

"American as apple pie."
http://www.gardendigest.com/cliche.htm

"As American as apple pie and motherhood
by Don Nash, Aug. 7, 2004"
http://www.unknownnews.net/040814d.html#dn7

Regards, Crabcakes

"As American as apple pie" is a common saying in the United States.
However, the expression (its full form being "As American as
motherhood and apple pie") is clearly metaphorical, rather than
literally trying to claim origin, since both motherhood and apple pie
predate the United States. It expresses the feeling that the concept
"America" is not just geographical, but instead ? along with
motherhood and apple pie ? is something wholesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_pie

I think a search of the congressional and senate records would find
many citations and at least lead to a first mention in the middle of
the last century.

I ran some Google searches and looked at the numbers of results returned.

"american as apple pie"                 159,000
"motherhood and apple pie"               61,500
"apple pie and motherhood"                  888 
"american as motherhood"                    497
"american as motherhood and apple pie"      404
"american as apple pie and motherhood"       82
"american as motherhood" -"apple pie"        76

Note that the phrases that connect America to apple pie and motherhood
to apple pie are much commoner than the phrases that combine all
three.

Without any evidence other than this, I believe that apple pie was
first linked to America by itself, without motherhood, as in the
well-established phrase "American as apple pie."  Independently,
motherhood and apple pie were linked as values no American politician
would ever oppose, not necessarily because they were particularly
American.  Some time after these two links were established,
motherhood migrated across the common apple pie to join it in being
linked to America.  Since there is nothing particularly American about
motherhood, this may originally have been a joke.

With these numbers, I find it hard to believe the claim from someone
on Wikipedia that "American as apple pie" is a shortened form of
"American as motherhood and apple pie," and in fact, this assertion is
questioned on the article's Talk page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Apple_pie

The first use of the phrase "as American as apple pie" in the NY Times
archives is from a 1938 article about lynching. I didn't find any hits
for "as American as motherhood" or "as American as apple pie and
motherhood."