Pinto bean pie: sweet, not savory!

Vinegar pie, buttermilk pie, and corn meal pie—these are all desserts that were in vogue when my grandmothers were growing up in the Great Depression. Made with just a few inexpensive ingredients, these pies—which are all, at heart, a variation on chess pie—were refreshing and still presentable to good company.

But what about pinto bean pie? It’s another oldie but was it also a goodie? I decided to find out on my own.

I’d been curious about bean pie for quite a while. When I first heard of it, I assumed that it was a version of Frito pie that was made with beans instead of chili. But when I heard people talking about eating bean pie for dessert, I realized that I had been wrong and that bean pie is sweet not savory.

After a bit of research, I found quite a few recipes and from the spices added decided that bean pie was trying to approximate a pumpkin or a sweet potato pie, as often included were allspice, cloves, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. And even though some recipes insisted that pinto bean pie was a substitute for pecan pie, after making it I failed to taste how this could be the case.

At first, I was put off by adding mashed beans to my mixture of butter, sugar and eggs. The resulting color of the blend was a bit unappetizing (a less-than-lovely shade of washed-out beige), and, well, it just seemed odd adding mashed pintos to my dessert. Pintos are made for savory dishes, not sweet!

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