Yes, Vinegar Pie Is A Real Thing And It's A Longtime Southern Tradition

It might take you a minute to get past the shock that, yes, vinegar pie is a real thing, and it's certainly made with real vinegar. (However, it's basically used to boost the pie's acidity rather than being its dominant flavor.) Vinegar pie often gets grouped in with other pies known as "desperation pies" due to their popularity during the Great Depression when certain ingredients were hard to come by. Simple, cheap substitutes were sought to make all types of dishes at this time, including these choose-your-own-adventure Depression meals. For example, when lemons were scarce, vinegar made a fine substitute. Chess pie, water pie (which is like a magic trick in your oven), and buttermilk pie are some other examples of popular desperation pies. 

While we don't know exactly when vinegar pie became popular in the South, one of the earliest references to it is an 1891 diary entry written by a woman named Nannie Stillwell Jackson. Jackson lived on a farm in Arkansas and documented her life in what eventually became a published book titled, "Vinegar Pie and Chicken Bread." In it, she described the pie as being "so good." 

As to why the South took to vinegar pie and other desperation pies, the answer, perhaps, lies in the fact that Arkansas and other Southern states were struggling long before the Great Depression arrived. Once the Great Depression hit, Southern states were particularly affected, especially in the 1930s when a number of dust storms wrecked the South, causing widespread devastation to people, crops, and animals. Given these circumstances, it is not difficult to see why so many people in the South resorted to cooking and eating vinegar pie, cementing the dish's status as a Southern tradition.

Many people are fascinated by the concept of Depression-era recipes partly because they are romanticized. The idea of frugal cooks using all of their creative juices to make something nourishing and flavorful out of practically nothing is fascinating. While recipes for the pie undoubtedly came in handy during this time, vinegar pie actually originated a century before the Great Depression.

One of the earliest printed recipes for the puckering pie can be found in Marion L. Scott's "The Practical Housekeeper and Young Woman's Friend" cookbook, which was published during 1855 in Ohio. The instructions call for brown sugar, water, vinegar, essence of lemon, and flour. All of these ingredients are combined and baked in a double-pie crust. Another pre-Civil War recipe for vinegar pie was printed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1859, but this one substituted molasses for sugar, suggesting that it was a recipe for frugal times as molasses was cheaper than refined sugar. Interestingly, these two early recipes indicate that vinegar pie had a Midwest or Atlantic origin, rather than a Southern one. That being said, the pie's ingredients certainly give no indication of where the recipe may have truly originated. Really, who can claim flour, water, and vinegar as their own? Not that it matters much; wherever you are in the United States, vinegar pie is worth enjoying.