chess pie n Also chess-cake pie [Varr of chess cake n] chiefly Sth, S Midl
A pie with the same sort of filling as a chess cake n 1.
1866 Amer. Agric. 25.365 TX, Chess Pie.—For two pies of common size, take 4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup cream, ⅔ cup butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, and flavor with nutmeg. . . This is the best pie we ever ate.—Mrs. Samuel P. May, Grimes County, Texas. 1873 Beecher Motherly Talks 464 MA, Chess Pie.—Four eggs, two cups sugar, one of cream, two thirds of a cup butter, one table-spoonful flour; flavor with nutmeg. When a delicate brown, try with a spoon as for a custard. 1905 Moore Way Heart 67 VA, Chess Cake Pie.—Beat 1 pound of white sugar into the yelks of 2 eggs, cream ½ pound of white sugar into ½ pound of butter. Add to the two. . ¼ pound of chopped citron and the juice of 2 lemons, or more if necessary. Bake in one pie crust and put a meringue over the top. 1917 Independent (Kansas City MO) 20 Oct 3/3 MO, He is as American a Southern boy, I imagine, as chesspie, hot biscuits and raw fried sweet potatoes, without sugar on ’em. 1928 Nashville Tennessean (TN) 18 May 4/3, I discover not a single true recipe for chess pie in any cookbook, no, not even in the excellent and compendious “Every Woman’s Cook Book,” edited by Mrs Charles F. Moritz, who seems to hail from Montgomery, Alabamah [sic]—the very heart and center, I should think, of the chess pie belt! 1932 (1946) Hibben Amer. Regional Cookery 290 MD, Chess-Cake Pie. 1940 Tampa Morning Tribune (FL) 12 Oct 20/5, For all who are interested in collecting cooking lore, the story of the cheesecake, familiarly known throughout the south as “chess” cake or pie, is one of the most interesting. 1949 Trahey Taste TX 236, The Texan. . . [will] take pie, preferably pecan, chess pie and almost any deep-dish cobbler. 1952 Tracy Coast Cookery 230 TN, Chess pie. c1960 Wilson Coll.csKY, Chess pie. . . A very rich pie, made largely of egg yolks. Very modern in area. 1965–70 DARE (Qu. H63, . . Desserts) 16 Infs, Sth, S Midl, esp wKY, Chess pie; TN66, VA74, Lemon chess pie; TN66, Coconut chess pie, Germans’ chocolate chess pie. 1970 DARE File AR, KY, Chess pie—A rich, creamy pie, so called because it could be kept in the chest. 1977 Anderson Grass Roots Cookbook 93 swKY, Blue Grass Chess Pie. . . Chess pies are great favorites throughout the South, but the recipes vary significantly. What is called a chess pie in North Carolina is known elsewhere as a brown-sugar pie . . ; in Kentucky, a chess pie is a thick, sweet egg-custard pie flavored with vanilla. 1985 Edgerton Raney 118 NC, He was eating a piece of chess pie as big as the Baptist Hymnal–in a plate on his knees. 1997 in 2006 DARE File—Internet TX, In my experience, Transparent Pie is Chess Pie, just depends on where you’re from. . . Where I grew up (southern Ohio border with Kentucky), it was called Transparent Pie on both sides of the river. . . I found out about Chess Pie when I went to Texas. 2019 DARE File—Internet MS, My mother and grandmother both made Chess Pies, but theirs were usually of the traditional variety. But every once in a while, we’d have a coconut version that would put me squarely in dessert paradise.