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—TRUMAN CAPOTE, THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR

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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine

1960

Harris Super Markets and Teeter’s Food Mart, both of North Carolina, merge, forming the popular Harris Teeter chain. Over time, Harris Teeter is bought by a Charlotte holding company, goes public, and buys 52 Food Worlds, 52 Big Stars, and South Carolina’s Bruno stores.

Stretching from Virginia to Florida, there are now some 150 Harris Teeters. Scribner’s publishes Clementine Paddleford’s long-awaited How America Eats, which devotes nearly 150 pages to southern cooking. The popular roving food editor of This Week Magazine, Paddleford spent 12 years researching and writing the book.

With America’s increasing thirst for wine, Virginia re-enters the wine business. (See Southern Wines, Chapter 3.)

Chattanoogan O. D. McKee creates family-pack cartons of snack cakes and names them after his four-year-old granddaughter, Debbie. Today Little Debbie Snack Cakes are an American staple.

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JACK DANIEL’S–RAISIN SAUCE

MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS

Delicious over vanilla ice cream as well as Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding.

1 cup water

½ cup Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey

¼ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1½ tablespoons cornstarch

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon salt

½ cup seedless raisins

2 tablespoons butter

1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1. Combine the water, whiskey, brown sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg, and salt in a small saucepan, whisking until smooth.

2. Add the raisins and butter and bring to a boil over moderately high heat. Reduce the heat so the liquid bubbles gently, then cook and stir for about 1 minute or until the mixture thickens.

3. Whisk in the lemon juice and serve warm with Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding.

He made in an old fashion hand freezer the ice cream which Uncle Willy sold over his soda fountain.

—WILLIAM FAULKNER, THE TOWN

HUGUENOT TORTE

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

I’ve always associated this apple-nut pudding with Charleston, South Carolina, because I’ve enjoyed it there both in private homes and in restaurants. I’ve made it back home, too, following the recipe in Charleston Receipts, a Junior League fund-raiser first published in 1950 and now past its thirtieth printing. Then along comes Lowcountry insider and culinary sleuth John Martin Taylor to burst the bubble. In Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking (1992), Taylor “outs” the “Charleston classic” and reveals its true identity: Ozark Pudding. In other words, it is an Arkansas classic. Taylor explains how he researched Huguenot Torte (named for the French Protestants who settled in and around Charleston) and tracked down Evelyn Florance, who baked it for Charleston’s Huguenot Tavern back in the 1940s. She admitted that her recipe, first printed in Charleston Receipts and later praised by Clementine Paddleford in The New York Herald Tribune, was indeed Ozark Pudding, tweaked and adapted. Here’s another adaptation: my own.

¾ cup unsifted all-purpose flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

1 large egg

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup finely chopped peeled and cored apple (about 1 large Golden Delicious or Rome Beauty)

¾ cup finely chopped pecans, black walnuts, or walnuts

1 cup heavy cream, softly whipped with 2 tablespoons confectioners’ (10 X) sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (topping)

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Coat an 8 × 8 × 2-inch baking pan with nonstick oil-and-flour baking spray and set aside.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt onto a piece of wax paper and set aside also.

3. Beat the egg, two sugars, and vanilla at high speed for about 2 minutes in a small electric mixer bowl or until very thick. By hand mix in the sifted dry ingredients, apples, and pecans.

4. Scoop the batter into the pan, spreading to the corners, and bake