Old-Fashioned Vinegar Pie (2024)

Watch my vinegar pie web story here.

Vinegar Pie, At a Glance

Pies in Time of Desperation

Sometimes, you just need something sweet. Something simple to throw together with a few pantry staples, something soul-satisfying and made with love. Sometimes you just need pie.

These days, most Americans are very fortunate to have ingredients handy to make fruit pies or chocolate pies whenever we feel like it, but back in the days before refrigeration, before huge supermarkets with all their bounty from all over the world, our pie-loving forebears had to be pretty creative in order to have pie in the dead of winter.

These pies relied on staples that were almost always available. Flour, butter from a cow, and water = pastry, and the fillings were based on other pantry stand-bys like:

• molasses (shoo fly pie)
• sorghum (sorghum pie)
• cream (sugar cream pie),
• cornmeal (chess pie and its variations like chocolate chess pie)

Eggs were almost always available because most people had chickens.

And there you had it: pie whenever you needed a sweet pick-me-up between the distant memory of bright crimson and golden leaves and the much longed-for buds of May.

If you know this is a pie you want to make, you can skip straight to the recipe.

But Vinegar Pie? Really?

I hear you. I mean, of all the desperation and “pioneer pies” I’ve ever heard of, old-fashioned vinegar pie seems to be the most desperate kind of pie, you know?

The pie is like an answer to a challenge.

Two pioneer women talking about what they could make out of nothing, and then one says to the other,

“Oh, yeah?! How ’bout you make a vinegar pie, Marjorie!”

And Marge pushes up her sleeves, adjusts her bonnet, tightens her apron strings and is all “Hold. My. Beer, Blanche.”

I think you’ll get over the weirdness once you realize the pie isn’t made mainly of vinegar. It’s not like a sliceable sweet and sour sauce.

The vinegar in this pie is used as a flavoring agent. Like vanilla. There’s just enough of it in the mix to bring a nice tartness to round out the sweetness.

It reads as a “lightly lemon pie,” not as a pie full of vinegar.

The rule “you catch more flies with honey (or in this case, sugar) than you do with vinegar” is still true.

Nobody is going to eat a pie that has a cup of vinegar in it, least of all me.

If you’d like to read a bit more about the history of vinegar pie, you can jump down to that section.

How to Make the Most Desperate of the Desperation Pies

See Also

Easy Pennsylvania Dutch Apple Dumplings | Hymns and VersesOld Fashioned Apple Dumplings | A Sweet Baked Apple Treat!The BEST Apple Crisp Shortbread Bars Recipe | Julie Elsdon-Height5 Ingredient Apple and White Cheddar Tart

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you’ll need to make vinegar pie.

• pie crust: feel free to make your own, or use frozen store-bought. I use pate brisee which is an all-butter crust.
• eggs: you can use 3 or 4. Using four eggs will give you a firmer, more easily sliceable set. If you use 3 eggs, your pie will be a bit softer and creamier. There is no wrong answer here–it all depends on your taste. But there are no substitutes here. You need the eggs.
• brown sugar: brown sugar provides sweetness and a bit of flavor from the molasses. You can use honey if you prefer, but just remember that this will add more liquid to the pie, so don’t go crazy with it. And in this case, I’d go with the four eggs.
• melted butter: adds richness, helps to carry flavor, and assists with browning. I give two amounts of butter. You can use more or less, depending upon your taste. Please note that the butter may seem to separate out of the pie and make the top look slick, but it will reabsorb as the pie cools.
• salt: brings out all the flavors and counteracts any bitterness you might get from the apple cider vinegar
• apple cider vinegar: provides the acidic flavoring of this pie so that it reads as almost a lemon pie. And yes, you could absolutely top this with meringue to make a “desperation lemon(ish) meringue pie.” Or just step into the modern world and make a lemon meringue tart.

Procedure

1. Make a pie crust (optional. You can also buy one)
2. Whisk the brown sugar, eggs, salt, butter, and apple cider vinegar together.
3. Pour the filling into the pie crust, and bake.

For those of you who are thinking, “It can’t be this easy,” trust me. It is that easy.

Do I Need to Blind Bake?

Jenni Says: I am pretty sure the pioneers didn’t take time to parbake or blind bake their crusts, but to ensure browning on the bottom of the pie, you may want to do that. Here’s how to blind bake a pie crust.

I hope I’ve made my case for the tastiness of this pie.

As I said in the recipe, I used brown sugar rather than white. I figure a pie “seasoned” only with a bit of salt and vinegar (chips! No, not chips) might need the additional flavor of molasses.

Anyway, I hope you give it a try and that you enjoy it very much.

As unlikely as it sounds, I think this homey pie will win you over with how easy it is to make and how easy it is to eat!

Looking for a Not-So-Desperate Dessert?

If it’s summer and fruit is at its peak, please make something luscious like a juicy peach blueberry pie or maybe a lazy peach sonker or a German plum cake.

But when fruit is scarce, turn to desperation pies. Pure comfort when it’s cold outside and summer is but a distant memory.

Okay, enough talk. You need to make this pie. Let’s go.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.

Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.

If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.

A Note About Measurements

It will help me and other readers so much if you take a moment to rate and leave a review for this recipe.

You can use the stars to rate 1-5 (5 is best), and leave a review in the comments. It helps me make adjustments if any are needed, and comments help others decide whether the recipe is worth making.

See Also

Moist Pear Cake Recipe

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Thank you so much for taking the time!

History of Vinegar Pie

Okay, so maybe my “hold my beer” scenario is pure fiction. Over on Instagram, I even wrote a one-act play about how vinegar pie was invented and featuring everyone’s favorite pioneers, Charles and Caroline Ingalls and their kids, Mary and Half-Pint. More fiction?

Well, according to Carissa from the blog Pretty Hungry, Laura Ingalls-Wilder wrote about this pie and a bunch of other crazy/awesome desperation pies her mom used to make in that little house on the prairie or in the big woods or wherever they were living at the time Charles would look over at her in January, and say, “Hey, hon? Make me a pie!”

It is my feeling that the history of vinegar pie is the same history as all the other desperation pies.

Someone, somewhere wanted pie.

And that someone decided they were going to make pie out of whatever was available.

I am not sure there was a single person that invented this pie.

It was probably a bunch of able and creative (and desperate) home bakers who all said something along the lines of “I have eggs, sugar, and vinegar. I’mma make a pie. Hold my beer.”

Hi, y’all! I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hopefully also learned a thing or two.

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Thanks for spending some time with me today, friends. Enjoy the vinegar pie, and have a lovely day.