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4. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and cool to room temperature before cutting. Serve as is or, if you like, top each portion with Brown Sugar Sauce.

JEFF DAVIS PIE

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

Although born in Kentucky, Jefferson Davis moved to Mississippi when he was a child and grew up there. This rich-as-Croesus pie named in his honor was given to me by my good Mississippi friend, Jean Todd Freeman. The two of us worked together in New York at The Ladies’ Home Journal, I in the food department and Jean as fiction editor. We often traveled about the Deep South on article assignment together and during those trips she taught me much of what I know about it today. Jean told me that this pie recipe is nearly 150 years old and that it had been created by a good plantation cook who admired the president of the Confederacy. I later learned that there are as many stories about the origin of Jeff Davis pie as there are different recipes for it. Some say that the pie was actually created by a freed slave working for a Missouri merchant and that it was his admiration for Davis that prompted her to name her pie after him. Some Jeff Davis pies call for brown sugar instead of white; some add nuts, chopped dates and/or raisins; some are heavily spiced; some are made with evaporated milk instead of cream; and some are lavishly swirled about with meringue. I personally prefer Jean’s version. A similar pie—all butter, sugar, and eggs but no milk or cream—is popular in Charleston and elsewhere about the Lowcountry. It’s known as Transparent Pie because its filling, once baked, is nearly clear. Translucent would be a truer description, but a pie named “translucent” hasn’t the appeal or glamour of one called “transparent.”

1¾ cups sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

1 cup heavy cream

2 large whole eggs

4 large eggs, separated

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

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

1. Preheat the oven to 325° F.

2. Combine 1¼ cups of the sugar, the flour, and butter in the top of a double boiler. Whisk in the cream, 2 whole eggs, 4 egg yolks, nutmeg, and salt. Set over simmering water and cook and stir for about 10 minutes or until as thick and smooth as custard sauce. Set off the heat.

3. Beat the 4 egg whites with the remaining ½ cup sugar in a large electric mixer bowl at high speed for 2 to 3 minutes or until thick and silvery. Because of the high percentage of sugar, the whites will not whip into a meringue. Gently but thoroughly fold the beaten whites into the custard until no streaks of white or yellow remain.

4. Pour the custard into the pie shell, set the pie onto a baking sheet, and bake on the middle oven shelf for 35 to 40 minutes or until puffed and as brown as caramel.

5. Cool the pie to room temperature on a wire rack, then cover loosely with plastic food wrap and refrigerate for an hour or more until firm.

6. Cut into slim wedges and serve.

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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine

1977

The first Vidalia Onion Festival is held in—where else?—Vidalia, Georgia.

Jack Fulk and Richard Thomas open the first Bojangles’ restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina, offering fresh Cajun-style chicken and from-scratch buttermilk biscuits among other southern favorites. Today there are some 340 Bojangles’ restaurants at home and abroad.

1978

Chef Alex Patout opens his first Cajun restaurant in New Iberia, Louisiana.

Catering to the increasing demand for specialty foods, Michael Barefoot moves A Southern Season to larger quarters in Chapel Hill’s Eastgate Shopping Center. His well-stocked food emporium also begins attracting national attention.

Phyllis Jordan enters the coffee and tea business in New Orleans. By the turn of the twenty-first century, P. J.’s Coffee & Tea has grown from a single retail shop to a multimillion-dollar business that not only imports, roasts, and distributes fine coffees but also franchises caf