Chess pie: how to make the flakiest pastry – The Spectator
Chess pie was, in one sense, new to me when I started learning about it a few months ago. Id never heard of this favourite of the American South until I came across it in a pie-centric cookery book. But in another sense, its extremely familiar both to me and to anyone whos ever eaten a pie or a tart before. Chess pie is a bit like an ur-pie, made with the most simple, most essential of pie ingredients.
Thats possibly where its name comes from: the story goes that in the 1800s in Alabama, where nuts and other common pie fillings were expensive, a freed slave made a pie with the most basic of ingredients eggs, sugar, butter, cream. When asked about it, she replied: Oh its jes pie. And, lo, thanks to a mishearing, chess pie was born.
It employs a classic American pie dough: all butter, barely sweetened and very flaky
Of course, there are other theories. One is that chess pie is actually much older than that, and comes from England. There are records of simple custard tarts, cooked to delay the spoilage that would occur if the ingredients were left raw, meaning that the pie could be left unrefrigerated in a chest. American writer and chef Lisa Donovan found a suggestion that the pie was originally made not with cornmeal, but with chestnut flour hence chess and that this only changed when the American chestnut tree fell victim to blight. The resulting pie was fantastic, but she remained unconvinced by this neat solution.
I suspect there is an element of truth to both of the principal origin stories: that a basic tart that could be left unrefrigerated was often made in England, but that chess pie as we know it originated in the American South as one of a host of make-do-and-mend pies during the Great Depression. There are a bunch of pies like this that use cheap and cheerful pantry staples and dont rely on seasonality: vinegar pie for when citrus was hard to get hold of (which Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in her Little House on the Prairie books), transparent pie from Kentucky (which Im afraid is just colourless rather than actually transparent), sugar pie (which uses milk or cream instead of buttermilk for the custard) and water pie (which just uses water and flour as the custard base).
Chess pies distinguishing characteristics are cornmeal which gives the gentlest coarseness to an otherwise smooth filling and a slightly acidic custard. It employs a classic American pie dough: all butter, barely sweetened and very flaky, it is perhaps slightly less elegant than a crumbly shortcrust cut flush against the sides of a fluted tin, but no less satisfying, with a thick, slightly undulating edge which gives that classic pie aesthetic. The trick, if youre more used to making British or French pastry, is to stop before you reach the breadcrumb stage of combining the ingredients. The flakiness of the pastry relies on sweeps and blobs of butter in the dough, so bits of butter should still be visible, otherwise the pastry will be short.
When it comes to the custard filling, there are a couple of different types: lemon, chocolate and coconut are all popular, but the classic is buttermilk. And its my favourite both for its simplicity (which seems correct for such a pantry-based bake) and its ability to cut through the intense sweetness of these kinds of pies. The custard is uncooked before it goes into the blind-baked pie shell, and then baked at a very low temperature for a whole hour, until set at the edges and on top but with a very slight jiggle in the middle. The combination of whole eggs, cornmeal and lots and lots of sugar creates a distinctive, delicious crust on the custard.
Once completely cooled, the pie will cut beautifully into clean, blond slices serve with a swirl of whipped (or squirty) cream piped perkily on top.
Makes 8 slices
For the pastry
150g plain flour
tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
115g cold butter cut into inch pieces
60g cold water
1 egg white
For the filling
300g caster sugar
4 eggs
200ml buttermilk
2 tbsp cornmeal
2 tbsp plain flour
vanilla extract
tsp fine salt
100g butter, melted and cooled
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Chess pie: how to make the flakiest pastry - The Spectator