All of these posts are from 2016 so I HOPE you can and will still answer a 2021 post. My family and I LOVE cherry pie and have long individual and also joint histories with cherry pie. There is NOTHING like Montmorency cherries for cherry pie. Their alternate name IS "pie cherry,"after all. We have had them fresh off trees (LOTS of work to pick and put enough for even one pie, I know from experience so BLESS the folks who do it to make them available!) We have used them from canned tart cherries (cherries only, no "additives") and we have almost always been able to buy IQF Montmorency cherries. I have experimented with commercial canned or bottled pie filling, but even the best quality from the best sources don't compare favorably to homemade and homemade is not that difficult. One quibble with way too many published recipes for cherry pie? They add cinnamon, but that must relate to some memory of those "red hots" fake cherry red candy with LOTS of hot cinnamon added. It should never be part of cherry pie! Almond extract is sometimes added but that is because cherry pits (broken open) have the flavor of almonds and thus, a fresh cherry pie can have the faint, elusive flavor of almonds. Problem with too many cherry pies is people or mfrs. add way too much. One last point: never add red food coloring! Ick!!

Now for my question: many folks who attended the same high school have a loving memory of the cherry pie served in the lunchroom. The pie was GREAT but it was the crumb topping that was outstanding and that no one seems able to duplicate, but we all keep trying to do. There was even a school cookbook that purported to finally have the recipe but it was not at all!
I'm a good cook and baker and have made a lot of pies, including cherry pies, in my life. I have lived much of my life in "pie cherry" country. I have way too many cookbooks and read every cooking blog or recipe that comes to my attention. I have tried recipes for "crumb topping," for "streusel topping," for "crumble topping," but none has been THAT crumb topping! I promise you this is not one of those "memory things" where reality can never measure up to memory of something great. This is a recipe thing and I hope you and King Arthur can help. I'm getting old and really, really want to reproduce that crumb topping before it's too late!
There is a rather well-known pie company based in Traverse City, Michigan called Grand Traverse Pie Company and when they started out, maybe 25 or so years ago, their pies were good and they came close to the cherry pie of memory with their popular (Mario Batalie praised it) cherry crumb pie. My opinion: it is not as good as it used to be AND the crumb topping is not nearly as good as it used to be. Their crumb topping was pretty good (years ago) but was never as good as the one that we old midwestern high schoolers crave.
Can you give an array of topping recipes for "crumb" "crumble" "streusel" or whatever you want to call it?? It did not have any kind of spice, i.e. no cinnamon. It was some magical combination of sugar, butter and flour. It was not brown sugar. Not sure if there was any confectioners/powdered sugar in the mixture. Not sure if there was vanilla and/or almond. It was chunky, light golden brown on top, kind of between soft and very slightly crunchy. Not hard.
Care to take up the challenge? PLEASE!

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