Water Pie

At this point I’m sure my phone knows about this little project I’m doing, because it’s started showing me videos of depression era cooking as social media ads/suggested content. I mean, I know these kinds of recipes are having a bit of a renaissance right now anyway due to the pandemic, but it feels a bit targeted if I do say so myself.

Take Exhibit A, this water pie. I saw a sponsored video where someone made water pie, and was instantly intrigued.

A dessert where the main ingredient is water? I don’t know if it sounds particularly good, but for the sake of experimentation, sign me up.

Initial thoughts on the recipe

The main substance of these pies, regardless of the recipe you use, is water. I mean. Need I say more?

I don’t know about you but water doesn’t really strike me as an ideal pie filling. How does this even work? Of course there are a few other ingredients, but still. I’m definitely impressed by the ingenuity of our ancestors.

Trying it out

Many of the recipes I could find were basically variations of Southern Plate’s water pie. Some of the others online were wildly different with completely different ingredient ratios and methods. I’m guessing it’s because water pie is one of those things everyone had their own recipe for — it’s not like they were printing “depression cookbooks” that everyone then bought.

Given the lack of consistency across recipes, I kind of frankensteined one while relying heavily on Southern Plate. I liked how this recipe from Grit included some spices to jazz up the flavor. Meanwhile Southern Plate had clearer instructions and a more impressive water-to-everything-else ratio, which felt more in the spirit of depression cooking. If we’re going to try old recipes here, might as well try the most challenging or mind-boggling of them!

Originally, water pies were a way to use up leftover pie crust so as not to waste any ingredients. I don’t have extra pie crusts hanging around, so I used my great-grandmother’s pie crust recipe.

Putting this together wasn’t too bad. The instructions to not stir were hard for me to follow, so I’ll admit I did a little swirling. But I left the pats of butter set on top of it all as instructed.

Thankfully the Southern Plate recipe included oven temperature and cooking time, so there was no guesswork in that arena this time around.

The verdict:

Okay, this is actually really good. I didn’t have much issue eating through the rest of it. It has sort of a custard-like texture– definitely soft but not nearly as liquid-y as I would have thought given the main ingredient is, you know, water.

It tastes sort of like apple pie filling, just without the apple — which I’m sure is in large part due to the cinnamon and nutmeg.

Mine ended up with a section that just had, like, solidified butter on the top. Honestly, I think I took it out of the oven a little bit before it technically had set to the degree it was supposed to. But everything firmed up in the fridge, and the solidified butter layer could be removed in one hunk, so ultimately it was all fine. However, I’m taking this as a lesson that maybe I need to be a little more strict with leaving it in the oven longer if parts of it are still looking really liquid-y.

Either way, water was honestly so tasty, I’d make it again. 4/5, no joke.