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of jam, spread thin on a marble slab or large flat plate, and dried in the sun for several days until leathery. Some Southerners roll the peach leather into a cone at this point and munch it like taffy. But there’s a more elegant finish: Dust the peach leather with confectioners’ sugar, roll it up jelly-roll style, and slice into rounds at ½-to 1-inch intervals. Then it’s back into the sun for two to three more days. Stored in an airtight container, peach leather keeps for weeks.

Philpy: A rice bread popular in the South Carolina Lowcountry from Colonial times up through the nineteenth century. It is rarely made today.

Pilau: Southern for rice pilaf; in the Lowcountry dialect, it’s purloo.

Pinder, pindar: What some old-timers call peanuts, especially those who grow them. In his Garden Book, Thomas Jefferson called them “peendars” and wrote of planting them at Monticello.

Plantation soup: A more elegant term for Pot likker.

Poke: A sack, usually a brown paper grocery bag. Southerners like to say that they’d never “buy a pig in a poke,” meaning they want to have a good look at something before they lay down any hard cash.

Poke sallet: Pokeweed leaves. When young and tender, they are edible. Most Southerners boil them just as they would turnip greens or collards—with a piece of side meat.

Pole beans: Green beans “on steroids.” Actually they’re about 1½ times the size of regular green beans and must be staked on poles, hence their name. For growin’ and eatin’ most Southerners would agree that Kentucky Wonder Beans are the best.

Pompey’s head: A large, domed, highly seasoned meatloaf once popular down south. There’s a recipe for it in Mrs. Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book (1872). As for the unusual name, southern culinary historian-cookbook author Damon Lee Fowler writes in the book’s glossary that it may have come from the “ancient Roman statesman Pompeius,” whose unusually broad head the meatloaf was said to resemble.

Portulaca (also called Purslane): A fleshy salad green popular long ago among southern cooks that’s being rediscovered by trendy chefs. I’ve seen lush beds of it in eastern North Carolina, also farther south in the Lowcountry. But I’ve had no luck growing it in my Chapel Hill garden; perhaps winters here are too harsh. Still, I keep an eye peeled for portulaca at my farmer’s market. It reminds me of the Italian puntarella.

Pot likker: Vegetable cooking water, particularly that left over from cooking collards, turnip greens, or green beans. It’s sopped up with corn bread.

Pulled pork: North Carolina barbecue, especially eastern style, for which the whole hog is pit-roasted over hickory coals until so tender the meat can be pulled from the bone. The classic sauce consists mainly of oil, vinegar, and cayenne pepper.

Pully bone: The chicken wishbone; children pull it to see who gets the longer piece—and a secret wish.

Purloo: A colloquial word, especially in the Lowcountry, for pilau or pilaf. (See Turkey Purloo, Chapter 3.)

Purslane: See portulaca.

Ramps: Wild leeks. Ramp festivals erupt in spring and summer across the Smokies and Blue Ridge.

Ratafia: A cordial made by steeping berries or other fruits in brandy. Old Charleston ratafias call for soaking peach kernels in brandy and adding orange flower water for flavor.

Receipt: The preferred southern word for recipe, especially in Tidewater Virginia and the South Carolina Lowcountry. It may derive from recette, the French word for recipe. Many French Huguenots settled in the Lowcountry.

Red and white: Popular New Orleans phrase for red beans and rice. (See recipe, Chapter 3.)

Rock (also called rockfish): What Outer Bankers and others living on the South’s other barrier islands call striped bass. (See Rock Muddle recipe, Chapter 2.)

Roux: The fat-and-flour paste used to thicken gumbos and scores of other Cajun and Creole dishes. There is blonde roux for delicate gravies and sauces and a rusty brown roux for more robust recipes. Miss Tootie Guirard, a lively Cajun cook I profiled for Family