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Harvest Pie. Vinegar Pie
Made without eggs or milk: 1 pint of water. 1/2 pint of vinegar. 1 pound of brown sugar. 1 ounce of butter. 4 ounces of flour. 1 teaspoonful of ground cinnamon. Boil the water, vinegar and butter together. Mix the flour, sugar and cinnamon together dry and dredge them into the boiling liquid, beating at the same time. Take it off the fire as soon as partly thickened, before it boils. May be baked either with or without a top crust.
A pantry pie built entirely from staples — no eggs, no milk, no fruit. The filling is cooked on the stove first, so the only real skill is getting the flour in without lumps.
- Measures in cupsA pint is 2 cups water, a half pint is 1 cup vinegar. A pound of brown sugar is about 2 1/4 cups packed; 4 ounces of flour is a scant cup (roughly 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons); 1 ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- The hinge: dredging"Dredge" here means sift or shake the dry mixture into the boiling liquid in a thin stream while beating hard. Dumped in at once, the flour and sugar seize into lumps that no amount of later beating will smooth. A whisk in one hand and a sieve in the other is the practical arrangement.
- Off the heat earlyThe recipe says to take it off as soon as it is partly thickened, before it boils; pulled at that point it will finish thickening in the oven. Take it off when it just coats the spoon.
- Vinegar strengthUse ordinary cider vinegar at about 5 percent acidity; the strength of older household vinegar varied. Do not substitute anything stronger or a reduced balsamic; a full cup of concentrated vinegar makes the pie inedibly sharp.
- No oven givenThe book assumes you know your crust. Bake as you would any single-crust flour-thickened pie: start at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F for another 25 to 30 minutes until the filling is bubbling and no longer tastes of raw flour.
- YieldThe water and vinegar alone come to three cups before the sugar and flour go in, so expect well over four cups of filling -- enough for two 8- or 9-inch shells. Cool it completely before cutting -- warm, it slumps.
- Top crustThe recipe allows either. Without a top crust, expect a soft, glossy surface that benefits from a lattice or a few strips to break it up. Either way, cut vents if you cover it.
Vinegar pie belongs to the family American cooks later called desperation or pantry pies -- sweet fillings assembled when eggs, milk and fruit were all out of reach; this one says as much in its own first line, 'made without eggs or milk.' The alternate name here, harvest pie, has been read as pointing to late summer and autumn, when hens slacken off laying and a cook may be feeding harvest hands in quantity on whatever is on the shelf, though the recipe itself says nothing about the occasion. The vinegar supplies the acid tang that keeps a sugar-and-flour filling from tasting flat, much as lemon does in a lemon pie; brown sugar and cinnamon carry the rest. Recipes of this kind circulated widely in American print in the later nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.