Pie gets me out of bed.
Lens

Recipes · Chess Pie

Chess Cake

A chess cake contributed by Miss Jennie Macrae of Clarksville, Tennessee, to Housekeeping in the Blue Grass (1881), the cookbook of the Missionary Society of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Paris, Kentucky. It is an Upper South church-cookbook recipe from the period before the name chess pie was common in print. It is baked as small tarts.

Small tarts; number not stated · Not stated

Engraving-style plate of a chess pie pie.

Method

  1. 1

    Combine the butter, sugar, yolks, whites and lemon flavoring in a bowl that can sit over a pan of hot water.

  2. 2

    Set the bowl over hot water on the fire and stir constantly until the mixture is as thick as honey.

  3. 3

    Line small tart pans with pastry, fill them and bake.

  • The source gives no crust recipe; the pastry is called only “paste,” and none is supplied here.
  • The source gives no oven temperature or time, and no yield.
  • The filling is thickened over hot water before baking. The standard chess pie described on Wikipedia is baked in a single pie crust, with flour and often cornmeal, and many versions add vinegar, buttermilk or lemon juice.
  • Buckeye Cookery (copyright 1877) prints a recipe titled Chess Pie with three eggs, two-thirds cup sugar and half a cup butter, finished with a meringue.

Sources

  1. Housekeeping in the Blue Grass (Missionary Society of the Southern Presbyterian Church, Paris, Ky.; Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1881), Internet Archive
  2. Estelle Woods Wilcox, Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (Minneapolis: Buckeye Publishing Co., copyright 1877), Internet Archive
  3. Chess pie, Wikipedia