pie.
Antiques and Heirlooms
MRS. NATHA ADKINS PARKER’S LEMON CLOUD PIE
CHEF BURTON’S NEW ORLEANS LEMON PIE
PINEAPPLE-COCONUT PIE
COCONUT CUSTARD PIE
COCONUT CREAM PIE
AMAZING COCONUT PIE
JAPANESE FRUIT PIE
DAMSON PLUM CUSTARD PIE
BUTTERSCOTCH PIE
Looking back to the Southern kitchens where wood fired the cooking and eating what was fresh and in season was a required rather than a chosen path, two ingredients stand right up and wave real hard. Lemon is one and coconut is the other. Both are dramatic, extraordinary, and multifaceted as ingredients in the kitchen, then and now. Each has its unique qualities: lemon its aromas, colors, extreme flavor, and tendency to move in and take over any dish. Coconut has glamour and a breathtaking beauty at its heart—one all the more precious for the serious slog of effort and mess that it takes a cook to get inside the nut. What it lacks in color, it more than surpasses in charm and substance. Coconut is richness, beauty, delicacy of lace, and lusciousness of velvet and cream. Shredded, flaked, toasted, sprinkled, or stirred into a custard or paired with nuts and raisins in a cookie or an icing, coconut says, Showtime!
and catches our eyes and appetites.
Neither is native to the Southern landscape, though certainly lemon trees can be found in Florida’s more tropical areas. No doubt the keeping qualities of both of these ingredients gave each one time to earn a following in the kitchens and at the Southern table. Before refrigeration was common, boatloads of coconuts, lemons, and tropical fruits like pineapple would arrive at Southern ports from faraway shores, and end up in the marketplace in time to be enjoyed without spoiling. They wouldn’t have been common, even in wealthy homes, but that only increased the pleasure and luxury that lemon and coconut conveyed.
There are two more old-timers worthy of a modern family reunion. Damson plum pie uses damson plum jelly for a tart sweet touch and, like butterscotch pie, comes with a delectably delicious crown of meringue.
Let this chapter remind you of old-fashioned celebrations where a few simple ingredients married with lemon or coconut, brown sugar, or last summer’s jam can become a memorable dessert—a culinary antique that still suits us, still gives pleasure, and still works.
Mrs. Natha Adkins Parker’s
Lemon Cloud Pie
MAKES ONE 9-INCH PIE
This lovely lemon pie comes from a marvelous book called The Lost Art of Scratch Cooking: Recipes from the Kitchen of Mrs. Natha Adkins Parker. If you enjoy cooking and stories of family connection, you will love and use this book as much as I do. Mrs. Parker raised her family in Stello, Mississippi, and one of her sons, Curtis Parker, realized that her lifetime of culinary knowledge and wisdom was a treasure. He documented her gift for scratch cooking,
presenting it in book form so that we can learn the good old ways and put them to use in our twenty-first-century kitchens. Mrs. Parker calls this simply Old-Fashioned Lemon Pie,
but given its combination of delicate texture and intense flavor, I like to call it Mrs. Natha Adkins Parker’s Lemon Cloud Pie.
PASTRY FOR A 9’INCH SINGLE’CRUST PIE (STORE’BOUGHT OR SEE BASIC
