Every Christmas, my father-in-law makes a chocolate chess pie. (My in-laws live in the Chicago area, but are transplants from Tennessee. Most of their extended family live there.) For those unfamiliar with it, chess pie is traditionally a pie crust with a simple filling of eggs, sugar, butter, and a little flour. Often times vinegar is included, along with flavorings such as vanilla, lemon juice, and chocolate. (My FIL adds vinegar, chocolate, and vanilla to his.)
My question is where did the name come from. I asked my FIL and he had know idea. My wife said that she heard a story where some woman made the dessert for her husband, and he asked her what it was. The response from the woman in a thick southern drawl was “It’s jes’ pie.” The “jes” got misunderstood by the man as “chess” and hence the name was born. This sounded way to farfetched, so I figured I’d look around online. Just as I suspected it seems to suffer from “hoosier-itis.” No one really seems to know what it means.
Some think it’s a corruption of cheese, referring to English lemon curd pie, of which the filling bears a close resemblance. Supposedly southern cookbooks used to describe pies with curdlike textures as cheesecakes or cheese pies, even if they contained no cheese.
Another theory is that it’s a corruption of “chest.” The story goes that the pies contained so much sugar that they could be stored in a “pie chest” (or “pie safe”) without spoiling, rather than a refigerator, where most pies needed to be kept.
The last theory I found also relates to England, but this time it derives its name from the town of Chester, England.
So does anyone know what the actual origins are, or is it just one of those words whose etymology has been lost in the past.
My ex in-laws, from Oklahoma, pronounce it “jess pie”. Never seen it written down 'till now. I always took it to be “just pie”. It’s like pecan pie, but without pecans.
I prefer a nice cheesecake.
Peace,
mangeorge
From England, huh? Maybe so. I do think, though, that a lot of southern tradition came by way of German immigrants. Of course that doesn’t rule out “cheese pie”.
Are there no southerners here?
My mom calls it “milk pie” or “poor mans’ custard.” As she is decendant from Mennonites from mid-western Pennsylvania (Swiss/German ancestry), a German connection is likely.
I’ve never heard it called chess pie or any of the variations given here.
Nashvillian checking in, but I have no clue where the name comes from. The thought of it ever contain cheese makes me kinda queezy. Come to think of it, I’m not a big fan of lemon or vinegar in mine either. It’s got it’s own unique flavor, very sweet with a nice texture. I used to think of it as pecan pie without the pecans, but pecan pie is more…syrupy?
I was once thoroughly disgusted at being served a custard pie while under the impression I was getting chess. Same color, but the custard had more of a scrambled-egg texture and a nasty flavor. Actually I may have liked it if I’d hadn’t been thinking ‘chess.’ Like when you go to sip your iced tea, but you’re thinking “Coke.” You like tea but it’ll throw you for a loop.
So in summary…I don’t know where the word comes from. But I did wanna speak up as a southerner, for the benefit of mangeorge.
I have a hard time accepting that “chess” is a corruption of the word “cheese,” especially in the South, where I would expect a word to get longer, if anything (“What’s that?” “Chee-yuzz pah.”). I don’t claim to be an expert on linguistics, though.
Texan checking in. There’s quite a German population in Central Texas, where my mother grew up. So much so that my not-at-all german grandfather says “Zies du?” to mean “Get it?” (embarrassingly, until I was in my 20s I thought it was Spanish). But I never heard of chess pie until I was in my teens, and tasted one that a nice lady from North Carolina had made. It was a lemon chess pie and I still have the recipe. Great stuff.
I buy the “cheese” corruption, and it may not have anything to do with cheese as we know the term. See, just as there are fruit butters (which contain no butter), there are fruit cheeses (which contain no cheese). Basically, you just cook a butter down even longer until it’s thick enough almost to slice. The texture is not that far off from what a thick lemon curd gets to be, so I’m suspecting that might be the link.
I think it’s more common in England. From the BBC: "Note: Apple cheese is sometimes confused with apple butter. The only difference between the two is that fruit cheese are cooked to a firmer consistency than butters, otherwise they are identical. " Link
Alternately, there are sweet cheese pies, based on cottage cheese - rather like a cheese danish.
