In my quest to research Tamale Pie for you, dear readers, I tracked down another recipe that was included in a book called Our Country’s Call to Service: A Manual of Patriotic Activities Through the Schools, published in 1918.  (The entire book is freely available here!)  I bet you didn’t know that Tamale Pie was patriotic, did you?  The recipe is featured in a section called “Saving Food,” where wives are tasked to conserve supplies during wartime.  The cookbook includes the following illustration just pages before the recipe for Tamale Pie.

Tamale Pie is included in a section on Meat Pies called “Meat Saving Recipes” that “make a little meat go a long way” in an attempt to conserve food during World War I.

As you can see, the above version of Tamale Pie distills the recipe to its most basic ingredients in order conserve as much money and food as possible.  Unlike many of the later versions of Tamale Pie, this early version is made without expensive dairy products.