Vinegar pie

Vinegar pie is a custard pie particularly associated with the cookery of the Pennsylvania Dutch and Appalachia in the United States' Upper Midwest.

Description

Vinegar pies are a type of custard pie. While the early versions identified by the food historian William Woys Weaver contained vinegar alongside a small amount of lemon zest, vinegar pies have been using a range of ingredients and preparations across time. Flavourings have included spices—sometimes cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, or allspice—blended into the filling or sprinkled over the top. Some versions have included toppings, such as lattices or meringue.^[1][2]

History

An early version published in the 1882 in Detroit, "about as close to the source of invention as we may come", is identified by Weaver.^[3][a] This pie modified the lemon meringue pie, a highly regarded food in Pennsylvania and New York that was costly due its large quantities of unsalted butter, eggs, and imported lemons. Vinegar pie removed much of the lemon, leaving only a small amount of zest. In its place, cider vinegar was added, producing a pie similar in appearance but not flavor. This pie was common in boarding houses and hotels, particularly in areas far from ports.^[5]

Vinegar pies remained popular for much of the 20th century, and eaten across America. One typical recipe published in 1910 in Washington, on the US's East coast proceeded as follows:^[6][2]

Vinegar Pie—One cup sugar, four tablespoons good vinegar, one tablespoon lemon extract, one cup hot water, four tablespoonfuls flour. Sift flour and sugar together, add vinegar and egg then the hot water, cook and fill a baked crust and frost with the whites.

Vinegar pies continued to be produced in the Depression as a desperation pie, including in African-American households,^[7] and into the 1960s when the use of apple cider vinegar meant the pie was considered a substitute for apple pie.^[8] By the 1980s, vinegar pies were particularly associated with folk festivals in Iowa and Oklahoma.^[9] They were made much less often than they had been at the start of the century.^[6] Sometimes, cooks stopped making vinegar pies out of a sense of pride, worried guests would consider them poor.^[2]

Vinegar pies continue to be prepared, and are associated with the cookery of the Pennsylvania Dutch and Appalachia in the United States' Upper Midwest.^[9][10] They are also sometimes identified as a part of Southern cuisine, as a variation on Chess pie.^[11] In Appalachian cuisine, vinegars made at home, fermented from a range of fruit are used, producing pies that vary in flavour.^[12] In Missouri, recipes for vinegar pies continue to be published in community cookbooks, even as their preparation was rare.^[13] Some bakeries and diners in the 21st century have started preparing vinegar pies, as a trendy food.^[2]

In media

Vinegar pies have appeared in popular media, such as Nellie McClung's autobiography Clearing in the West (1935). In a section, McClung recounts her mother preparing several vinegar pies for a picnic, spiced with cinnamon and cheaper than the fruit pies she wanted to make.^[1] They also appear in the musical Waitress, based on the 2007 film. There, a recipe titled "I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Vinegar Pie" invokes the accessibility of vinegar pie's ingredients but ultimately says it is something the protagonist does not want, using the vinegar's sour taste as a metaphor for the abuse of her husband.^[14]

Notes

References

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