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Found a note for 'vinegar pie' in my grandma's old address book
I was looking for a phone number and saw a folded paper with just 'vinegar, sugar, butter, eggs, crust' written in pencil. I asked my mom about it and she said her grandma made it during the Great Depression when fruit was too dear. I tried it, and it's a sweet, custardy thing that tastes like lemon. Has anyone else found a recipe like this, maybe from the 1930s?
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vals385mo ago
My aunt had a shoebox full of old recipe clippings and one was for something called "poor man's pie" that used vinegar too. It was basically the same idea, a cheap way to make a sweet pie when you had no lemons or fruit. She said her family called it "mock lemon" pie. It's wild how creative people got with just a few basic pantry items back then. That custard texture is surprisingly good for something so simple.
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miller.jason5mo ago
That mock lemon idea is clever, but calling it a poor man's pie feels off. My great-grandma made a similar pie, but she always had a jar of put-up peaches or berries in the cellar. She used vinegar as a brightener, not a total replacement. It was more about stretching the good fruit you had, not always going without. Maybe it depended on where your family was farming?
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park.troy3mo ago
You just gotta stir a little more vinegar in next time and it'll brighten right up.
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