• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

BUTTERMILK PIE

MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS

Like Vinegar Pie, Buttermilk Pie was often baked in lieu of lemon chess pie because in the butter-churning days of old, there was always plenty of buttermilk on hand. To this day, Buttermilk Pie is beloved throughout the South. Tip: To catch any boilovers, it’s a good idea to set the pie on a baking sheet before you slide it into the oven.

1½ cups sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) butter, melted

3 large eggs

1½ cups buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (optional)

One 9-inch unbaked pie shell (see About Pie Crusts, frontmatter)

1. Preheat the oven to 325° F. Beat the sugar, flour, and melted butter in a small electric mixer bowl for 1 minute, beginning at low speed, then raising to moderate so that all ingredients are well blended. Scrape the bowl well at half-time.

2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the eggs one by one; continue beating for 30 seconds or until light. With the mixer still at low speed, add the buttermilk, vanilla, and nutmeg, if using. When thoroughly combined, pour the filling into the pie shell.

3. Slide the pie onto a baking sheet and bake on the middle oven shelf for about 1 hour and 10 minutes or until puffed, nicely browned, and a cake tester inserted halfway between the edge and the center comes out clean.

4. If you want to serve the pie warm, cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Or, if you prefer, cool the pie to room temperature before serving. Note: The filling will fall but this is as it should be. Cut the pieces small—this pie is rich.

* * *

TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine

1973

Stephen Kuhnau, who’d grown up sickly in south Louisiana, opens a health food store in Kenner and begins serving “smoothies”—nutritious fruit shakes he’d created years earlier while jerking sodas. Before long, Smoothie King bars are popping up all over the U.S. and Stephen Kuhnau has been crowned “Mr. Smoothie King.”

1974

Now fully restored, the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, offers rooms for overnighters, each furnished in the simple form-follows-function Shaker style.

1975

Michael Barefoot opens a 500-square-foot coffee roastery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and calls it A Southern Season. Today it is one of America’s premier specialty food shops.

Using his grandmother’s biscuit recipe, Maurice Jennings launches Biscuitville to serve quality breakfasts to those in a hurry. This Burlington, North Carolina–based fast-food chain now operates dozens of restaurants in Virginia and North Carolina.

* * *

* * *

MOONPIE

Traveling the East Tennessee mining country back in 1917, Chattanooga bakery salesman Earl Mitchell asked the miners what sort of snack they’d like. Something filling for their lunch pails is what they wanted.

“How big?” Mitchell asked.

“As big as the moon and twice as thick!” one miner replied, cupping his hands to frame a newly risen full moon.

Back at the Chattanooga bakery, Mitchell saw marshmallow-dipped graham cookies, big round ones drying in the sun. Mitchell suggested adding a second cookie, then coating the cookie sandwich with chocolate. It was done.

Ah, thought Mitchell. MoonPie.

Soon after, the MoonPie began its steady march throughout the South and by the time of the Great Depression, it had become a staple.

The drink of choice to wash down a MoonPie was Royal Crown Cola, and in no time “Gimme an RC and a MoonPie” was almost a mantra.

Only a nickel for the pie and a nickel for the drink, together they were enough to hold anybody—even a hungry ten-year-old boy—till suppertime.

The first MoonPies—marshmallow-filled, chocolate-dipped cookie sandwiches—were about the size of small Frisbees (well, almost). Now, in addition to the original, they also come in such flavors as banana, strawberry, and coconut.

Today the MoonPie is celebrated in song (“Weezie and the MoonPies,” to name just