Vinegar Pie
One egg, one heaping table-spoon flour, one tea-cup sugar; beat all well together, and add one table-spoon sharp vinegar, and one tea-cup cold water; flavor with nutmeg and bake with two crusts. -Mrs. B. A. Fay.
A desert pie of the plainest kind: a lemon-less lemon pie, built from what was in every pantry. It works, but the proportions need reading carefully before you commit them to a crust.
- Tea-cupA 19th-century tea-cup is generally smaller than a modern measuring cup, commonly reckoned at somewhere between 6 and 8 fl oz. Reading the sugar and the water as about 3/4 cup each is the safer starting point; a full cup of each will make the filling slacker and sweeter.
- The filling is very thinOne heaping tablespoon of flour for roughly a cup of liquid (the water, the vinegar and the egg) is barely enough thickening. Expect a soft, custard-like set rather than anything sliceable while warm, and let the pie cool completely before cutting.
- Vinegar"sharp" points to a strongly acid vinegar; cider vinegar is the likeliest thing in an Ohio kitchen, and a modern bottle at about 5 percent will serve. One tablespoon in this quantity of sugar reads as tartness, not as vinegar.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature and no baking time. A hot start of about 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then 25 to 30 minutes at a moderate heat, until the top crust is browned and the filling no longer sloshes when the pan is nudged, is a workable modern approach.
- Two crustsA double-crust pie with a liquid filling needs generous steam vents and a well-sealed rim, or it will boil out at the edge. Set the pie on a rimmed sheet.
- NutmegFreshly grated, about a quarter teaspoon. Whole nutmeg and a grater were common kitchen equipment when this book was compiled, and pre-ground nutmeg tastes flatter here.
- Pan and yieldThis quantity suits an 8-inch pie plate and gives six modest wedges. In a 9-inch pan the filling layer will be shallow and set faster.
Vinegar pie belongs to the family of American "desperation" or "make-do" pies, alongside water pie, molasses pie and mock apple pie: sweetened custards or syrups given a fruit-like sharpness by whatever acid was at hand when lemons were expensive, seasonal, or simply unavailable a hundred miles from a rail depot. Cider vinegar was common in Ohio cellars, being the natural end of a barrel of apple cider, and it stood in for citrus in pies, in mock-lemon flavorings, and in sweet-sour sauces. Buckeye Cookery (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) was compiled from contributions by named local women, and Mrs. Fay's recipe is characteristic of that source: no oven temperature, no baking time, no pan size, because any cook using the book already knew how she baked a pie. Such pies are often described as Depression-era, but recipes like this one show they were part of ordinary Midwestern housekeeping half a century earlier.