- Chess pie
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Vanilla buttermilk chess pie
Chess pie is a particularly sugary dessert characteristic of Southern U.S. cuisine. According to James Beard's American Cookery (1972) chess pie was brought from England originally, and was found in New England as well as Virginia. Recipes vary, but are generally similar in that they call for the preparation of a single crust and a filling composed of eggs, butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla. What sets chess pie apart from many other custard pies is the addition of corn meal. Some recipes also call for corn syrup, which tends to create a more gelatinous consistency. The pie is then baked. The result is very sweet and is often consumed with coffee to offset this.
Chess pie is closely related to vinegar pie, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Vinegar pie generally adds somewhere between a teaspoonful and tablespoonful of vinegar to the above ingredients to "cut the sweetness". Some variations are called Jeff Davis or Jefferson Davis Pie.
Although preparation of a pecan pie is similar (with the obvious addition of pecans), pecan pie usually contains corn syrup.
Name origin
The pie seems to have no relation to the game of chess, which has led to much speculation as to the origin of this term. Some theorize that the name of the pie traces back to its ancestral England, where the dessert perhaps evolved from a similar cheese tart, in which the archaic "cheese" was used to describe pies of the same consistency even without that particular ingredient present in the recipe. In North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery, Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks argues that the name derives from Chester. There is also a theory that the word "chess" pie comes from the piece of furniture that was common in the early South called a pie chest or pie safe. Chess pie may have been called chest pie at first, because it held up well in the pie chest. Another theory is that it was originally called "just pie" because it was so simple and plain, and slang or accent morphed it to "chess."
American piesSweet Apple crisp • Apple pie • Bean pie • Blackberry pie • Blueberry pie • Bob Andy pie • Buttermilk pie • Cherry pie • Chess pie • Cream pie • Derby pie • Fried pie • Jelly cream pies • Key lime pie • Lemon ice box pie • Lemon meringue pie • Mississippi mud pie • Pecan pie • Pumpkin pie • Rhubarb pie • Shoofly pie • Sweet potato pieSavory Manufacturers Categories:- American pies
- Sweet pies
- Cuisine of the Southern United States
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