What in the World is Vinegar Pie: Recreating a Historic Recipe

As any good baker or cook will tell you, before undertaking a new recipe, it’s important to read and fully understand the instructions in advance. Woe to the baker who begins a sweet treat on the morning of a special occasion, only to make it halfway through and find the dreaded “refrigerate overnight” instructions! 

Baking success is also sometimes dependent on knowing the historical context of your dish, particularly when creating a dessert described more than one hundred years ago. As an example of the challenges posed by historic recipes: you will often find that specific temperature and bake time prescriptions are missing entirely. 

Vinegar Pie circa 1905 did indeed require some historical consideration, reasoned guesswork, and significant vigilance. Let’s break down the formula of our historical document and examine what challenges it presents. The following is my annotated version of the recipe:

A quick google search turns up that a gill is ½ cup. For the vinegar, we’re going to assume for sanity’s sake that this is an actual cup measurement, and not a teacup or other container. And why in the world would they say “two quarters of a cup,” instead of the simpler “half?” Might our baker have possessed only a ¼ cup measuring tool?

The astute reader will note there is no cook time mentioned, nor analogy to what the mixture’s thickness should look like. To the modern eye it seems like we’re making something similar to lemon curd here. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I had already poured only somewhat thickened vinegar liquid into the crust that I realized this fact. Also, the original author clearly assumed a pie crust was sitting around ready for use (and did not provide a recipe for one). I reasoned that if they can have crusts just sitting around in case of need, so can I, so I cheated and used a pre-baked graham cracker pie crust (ah, the perks of the modern grocery store).

After some internet and cookbook sleuthing, and in the interest of convenience, I decided to treat this pie like a lemon meringue pie, and so investigated the typical temperature and bake time for those. For the pre-meringue baking round, I settled on 350° (350° is “hot,” right?) and 20 minutes, plus a few extra to account for altitude. While I was baking at a mile high, our Leadville baker would've been at nearly two miles! Perhaps the lack of bake time wasn't terribly relevant, after all.  While the undercooked vinegar curd baked, I turned to the meringue.

As a meringue novice I only had a vague idea of how you make meringue. How many eggs do you use for a pie? Do you really add only powdered sugar? It was time for more research!

When my meringue looked set and perhaps a smidgen too toasted I removed the pie to cool (incidentally, this was 20 minutes in, thank goodness for my watchful eye). Ignoring that my curd was more of a viscous liquid than gelatinous solid, the first taste went like this, “WOW, that’s a burst of interesting flavor! It’s sweet and sour without being bitter!” Followed by, “something tastes metallic…what is that aftertaste…oh no, no, no this won’t do.” The pie ended up in the garbage can. 

A further bit of historical knowledge might allow me to improve upon my first test. The Colorado baker of 1905 may have been more likely to use apple cider vinegar than the white version. White vinegar is fermented from grain alcohol (also an ingredient in the significantly dearer drinking whiskey), but apple cider vinegar is fermented from apple cider, or from a similar substitute called “apple scrap vinegar” that one can easily make at home. Apple husbandry and orchards were a common feature in Colorado during the early part of the 20th century, and so our recipe author may have had apple cider vinegar closer to hand.