I added my own variation of this pie - There’s no rule saying we can’t give an old recipe a new little twist. Vintage recipes have good bones, darling! Don’t be afraid to experiment and add your own special touches—you’re simply adding another chapter to the story of the recipe.

There is a group of recipes known as "desperation pies" that came about out of necessity during America's Great Depression, which took place from 1929–1939

Desperation pies, also known as "make-do" pies, are made with simple ingredients that home cooks usually had on hand and were not overly expensive. Common types of desperation pies included vinegar pie, chess pie, mock apple pie, shoofly pie, sugar cream pie, water pie.

When recipes are passed down from one generation to another, it's passing down a story. It's suddenly so much more than a pie or a cake; it's a retelling of our own ancestral past. Food is a key part of social history. When we include such recipes in our own kitchens and our menus, we are living the stories of those times in which they come from. Desperation pies tell us the story of the ingenuity of the Depression era housewives that found ways to still bake for their families using what limited resources were available to them at the time.