ISSUE 35, PIES, Part 7: Old Southern Pies
Old Southern Pies
Let’s be charitable. Let’s just say one form of cultural creativity in the South is making up fictions about the past. Inventing traditions is something all cultures do. Some do it with greater insistent and fancifulness than others. Consider southerners imagining an antiquity to certain dishes. Pies for instance. It offends sensibility that certain favorite, indeed iconic pies, are of recent vintage—pecan (1880s Texas, popularized by Karo syrup between the world wars)—Key Lime (again popularized in the 20th century)—apple nut pie (1910s). Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Charlotte Walker, the food editor of the Charleston Post & Courier ran a column called “Recipes Loved and Lost,” in which readers wrote in requesting or supplying lost favorite recipes. Desserts predominated. And though gems of traditional cookery did surface now and again in the run of the column, there were lots of recent creations mystified with vague recollections. I think of one from April 30, 1972, submitted from Mrs. Pat Nelson, given by an unnamed friend “who lives on a plantation not far away.” It was, of course, “an old family recipe” and “might be described as a cousin to Southern Pecan Pie.”
Plantation Sorghum Custard Pie
1 cup sorghum
3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar (or ½ cup granulated sugar & ½ cup brown sugar)
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons melted butter
Uncooked pie shell with fluted edge.
So how old could this be. Let’s just think this through. First of all the custard pie is the signature of the age of the cookstove, when cooks finally had enough temperature control to set custards reliably. So it wouldn’t predate 1835 when the cookstove became widespread in the South.
Sorghum was introduced into South Carolina in 1856 by Lawrence Wray from Natal South Africa who sent it to Gov. Hammond at Redcliffe Plantation. It remained an experimental crop until the Civil War. Because it was cold tolerant northerners could grow it when cheap Louisiana & Georgia sugar was no longer available. In the South it became universal after the battle of Vicksburg in 1863 when sugar ceased to be produced. But is this a product of the Civil War? No, since the recipe calls for sugar in addition to sorghum. Sorghum in 1860-65 was used used to replace sugar.
Nut pies seem to have been elaborations of earlier molasses pies or custard pieces—peanut pie, hickory nut pie, and pecan pie all date from the 1880s in terms of first incidence in print. My thinking that the earliest Sorghum Custard Pie probably existed was 1885.
Would it be worth trying? Yes—I think so. And I bet it would taste similar to the Mississippi cane syrup pies that appeared in the recipe columns of Gulf Coast newspapers in the 1920s. Although those pieces (see Biloxi Daily Herald January 9, 1923) used lemon to get the sour note rather than buttermilk.
So exactly what pies can be said to be standard southern pies with that are over a century old? Well here’s a starter list:
CORN PIE
Grate six ears of green corn, cut the grains from three, mix with this a large spoonful of butter, two eggs beaten, salt, black pepper, and a green pepper cut up; strain some ripe tomatoes through a colander; add half a pint of the juice to the corn; pour half of the mixture into a baking dish, put in the centre any kind of cold meat, pour on the rest, and bake slowly about an hour. [By a Southern Lady, The Centennial Receipt Book Written in 1876 (Charleston), 15.]
RICE PIE WITH CHICKEN
Boil a pint of rice rather soft, but not gluey, also boil a pair of chickens. While the rice is warm stir into it a large spoonful of butter, season with black pepper, a teaspoon of made mustard and a little salt; then add three eggs well beaten. Put half of the rice in a baking dish, cut up the chickens and lay on it; then cover them with the rest and bake. [By a Southern Lady, The Centennial Receipt Book Written in 1876 (Charleston), 28.]
BLACK WALNUT PIE
2 Cups milk, 1 cup sugar, 6 tablespoons flour, 2 egg yolks ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 teaspoons butter, 1 cup black walnuts, Baked pastry shell, whipped cream. Make a custard of the milk, sugar, flour and egg yolks, cooking until thick in a double boiler. Add salt, vanilla and butter, cool. Add nut-meats and pour into a baked pastry shell. Let set and cool. Serve with whipped cream topping. [Richardson TX Echo (November 9, 1945), 5.]
BUTTERSCOTCH PECAN PIE
Beat together until well belnded the yolks of three eggs, three-fourths cupful of brown sugar, two tablespoonfuls of pastry flour and one tablespoonful of butter. Stir in one cupful of sweet milk. Cook until thick and creamy. Add one-third cupful of broken pecan meats. Let cool, flavor with one teaspoonful of vanilla and one-fourth teaspoonful of almond extract. Prepare a crust, pour in the mixture and bake quickly. Whip the egg white until stiff add five tablespoonfuls of granulated sugar and a tiny pinch of cream of tartar. Pile high upon the pie and brow quickly This pie is best served cool. [Washington Evening Star (February 4, 1930), 37.]
HICKORY NUT PIE [African-American Version]
Mix thoroughly one cup of sugar, one-half cup of bread crumbs, two-thirds cup of hickory nut kernels and one tablespoon of flour. Fiss pastry, cover with sweet milk; drop a few chunks of butter over the top and bake. [Washington Bee (October 12, 1907), 3.]
HICKORY NUT PIE [Appalachian Version]
To your favorite custard pie recipe add one-half cup ground hickory nut meats. Bake as ordinary custard pie. The nuts stay on top, forming a nice brown topping. We are very fond of this unusual pie [Lexington Herald (December 3, 1927), 2.]
KENTUCKY OLD-FASHIONED CUSTARD PIE
One and one-half pints milk (fresh and unskimmed is best). 4 eggs, 1 cup sugar. 1 teaspoon extract of vanilla, one pinch of salt. Line the pie tin with a high rim pinched into shape with thumb and forefinger. Set on edge of oven and fill with the above mixture, scattering a bit of nutmeg over the top. Bake in a moderate oven 20 minutes.
MOLASSES NUT PIE [Specialty of Taussig’s Bakery, Washington DC in the 1860s]
Three eggs, slightly beaten, ¾ cup unsulphured molasses, 1 cup white corn syrup, 1 teapoon vanilla, salt, 2 to 3 tablespoons butter melted, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 tablespoon enriched flour, ½ cup peanuts, pecans or walnuts, 1 8-inch unbaked pie shell. Combine the first 6 ingredients and mix well. Mix cinnamon with flour and with nuts, and add to egg-molasses mixture. Pour into 8-inch unbaked pie crust. Bake 50 minutes in a moderately hot over (375 degrees f). Note: This pie is rather sweet and is best served warm with cold unsweetened whipped cream piled on top. [Shields note: originally this would have been a walnut or a peanut pie—pecans did not become a pie ingredient until the 1890s long after the Taussig baker was no more.] [Baton Rouge Advocate (February 25, 1949), 23.]
PEANUT PIE
1 cup corn syrup, 3 tablespoons molasses, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, ½ teaspoon salt, 2 eggs beaten, 1 cup peanuts, coarsely chopped, ½ teaspoon vanilla. Mix ingredients and pour into unbaked pie crust. Bake one hour in moderately slow oven (325 degrees f.). [Washington DC Evening Star (February 23, 1913), 30.]
PEANUT PIE CRUST
Two cups flour, 2 tablespoons lard, 3/4ths cup ground parched or roasted peanuts, ½ teaspoon salt. Chop lard into flour and slat, add peanuts and enough ice water to make a very stiff paste. Use for bottom crust for fruit, custard, or lemon pies. [Miami Herald, March 21, 1915, 2-11.]
PECAN PIE
“Take 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water, boil until thick with a lump of butter the size of an egg; then take 4 eggs separate; take the yolks with 2 tablespoons of corn starch (or flour) and 1 cup of sweet cream (or milk), stir this into syrup; when thick remove from the stove and add 1 ½ pounds of pecans chopped fine and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Beat white and put on to bake, with a rich crust. [ Fort Worth Star-Telegram (July 2, 1908), 7.]
WALNUT PIE
One cup of walnut meats, ground fine in a coffee mill; mix with them one cup of soft bread crumbs, one cup of milk, one beaten egg, one-fourth cup of sugar, the juice of half a lemon, and half a teaspoonful salt. Bake on a shallow plate, the same as mince pie. [August Chronicle (February 23, 1899), 3.
Sweet Pies:
MISSISSIPI CANE SYRUP PIE
I cup Mississipi Cane Syrup
¼ cup butter
4 eggs
Juice of 1 lemon
Mix all together and bake in pie tin lined with pastry. [Daily Herald of Biloxi, January 9, 1923].
SLICED SWEET POTATO PIE
For baking this, a plate deeper than the common pie-plate is necessary. Bake medium-sized sweet potatoes not quite done; yams are best. Line the plat with good paste; slice the potatoes; place a layer upon the bottom of the plate; over this sprinkle thickly a layer of good brown sugar; over this place thin slices of butter and sprinkle with flour, seasoning with spices to the taste. A heaped tablespoonful of butter and a heaped teaspoonful of flour will be sufficient for one pie. Put on another of potatoes, piled a little in the middle. Mix equal quantities of wine and water, lemon juice and water, or vinegar and water, and pour in enough to half fill the pie; sprinkle over the potato a little flour, and place on the upper crust, pinching the edges carefully together. Cut a slit in the centre, and bake slowly for one hour.” [Damon Lee Fowler, ed. Mrs. Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995 reprint of 1872 edition), 255.]