Discover the Depression-Era trick that transforms water into pie!

…or: how creative home bakers managed to make a dessert from practically nothing!

Recipes from the Great Depression carry reminders of how difficult life was in that period for the average American, including a regular Depression pies in which oats make for a poor man’s substitute for pecans, and even a mock apple pie, where cinnamon-scented Ritz crackers stand in for fruit.
And then also desserts known as “desperation pies,” “hard times pie” or “water pie,” that literally sounds like a practical joke or urban myth.
A little bit like stone soup that, believe it or not, really exists in China still today and is a peculiar street food.
Either way, the ingredient list is so minimalistic that it challenges what, on an existential level, even qualifies as pie.
And, of course, water isn’t an ingredient normally associated with pie fillings. A pie filling composed mainly of water might sound nutty, but it made sense during the harsh economic times of the 1930s and, whenever there is a scarcity of resources, creativity is necessary, above all in the kitchen.
So how does a pie filling made with water not just turn into a soupy, soggy mess?
In this case, our plain, old H₂O forms the base of the filling, along with sugar, flour, butter, and a little vanilla. However, through a little alchemical magic, these ingredients transform into a wobbly, pretty good custard.
No one knows who was behind the first versions of these treats, but we can suppose they were people with a better grasp of chemistry than history ever gave them credit for.
In fact you had to make the most of what you had access to, and I think Depression-era cooking was really quite genius!
And It’s not necessarily intuitive, for example, to put mayonnaise in a chocolate cake when you’re out of butter, but actually it works, simply because mayonnaise is just oil emulsified with egg.
And the reason that our water pie works is fairly simple. While a regular custard pie relies on eggs to set, in its most elemental form, a custard can be thickened with nothing more than starch.
Moreover, although it may seem like an oddity, it’s a surprisingly close relative of a number of other desserts, some of which still around, including an average Canadian butter tarts or an Amish cinnamon pie, essentially water pie with added spice.
With the heat, the sugar melts, the butter emulsifies, and the flour leaches just enough starch to bind the whole mixture.

In any case, when times are not quite as hard, a water pie recipe could easily serve as a jumping-off point for all sorts of delicious variations.
For example, some grandma-inherited water pie recipes do incorporate egg yolks, which will make for a richer, golden custard, while a dash of nutmeg or a final dusting of powdered sugar would do wonders.
However, a dish named for “hard times” is never going to be glamorous, but a testament to cooks who could put food on the table when the pantry was all but bare.
Dessert is often considered a luxury, so it’s no wonder that people during the Depression cobbled together something sweet using the scant ingredients they had on hand.
This led to simple recipes.
Home cooks often had to make substitutions, like vinegar and baking soda instead of eggs and dairy to create genial recipes that give us a window into what their world was like during this time in history.

Images from web – Google Research