Chess Pie

[THGL]

This is considered "Southern" food here in the USA. This is my grandmother's recipe and it's similar to others you can find online, so I'm not hesitant to posting it online.

One pre-cooked pie shell (not the deep dish one, it won't cook properly), or your own homemade one.
1 stick butter
1 ½ cups sugar
2 tsp. plain white vinegar
3 eggs
1 ½ tsp. corn meal
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350

Combine butter and sugar in a saucepan and melt over med low heat about 5 minutes stirring regularly.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the vinegar.
Then add the eggs, one at a time beating in thoroughly after each.
(be quick with your wisk, the hot sugar mixture will want to scramble your eggs at first)
Add the corn meal and vanilla.
Pour into pie shell and bake about 45 minutes.
Totally cool down to room temp before slicing.

This is an extremely rich dessert. Enjoy!

[klankymen]

wait, no pics? Does it somehow end up having a chessboard pattern on the top, or why's it called that?

[THGL]

Sorry. Here's a crappy cell phone photo of what's left (I brought a couple of pies to work yesterday).


As for the name, who knows?
Here's Wikipedia's guess:

The pie seems to have no relation to the game of chess, which has led to much speculation as to the origin of this term. Some theorize that the name of the pie traces back to its ancestral England, where the dessert perhaps evolved from a similar cheese tart, in which the archaic "cheese" was used to describe pies of the same consistency even without that particular ingredient present in the recipe. In North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery, Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks argues that the name derives from Chester, England. One folk etymology suggests that it was referred to as "just pie", which soon shortened to "jus' pie" and then corrupted to "chess pie". There is also a theory that the word "chess" pie comes from the piece of furniture that was common in the early South called a pie chest or pie safe. Chess pie may have been called chest pie at first because it held up well in the pie chest.

That last part about the pie safe is a crock of shit, IMO. All baked items went into pie safes because, at the time, there was no refrigeration. A pie safe is basically a wooden upright chest with openings on all sides to let air circulate through it. A GIS of "pie safe" will show you a picture.