A Forgotten Plum and Depression-era Pies

Economic and political news is depressing these days to say the least.  Concerns over skyrocketing gas prices, belt tightening at the grocery store, the refusal of Congress to enact sane gun control laws and a series of riveting Congressional hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol have many feeling in need of comfort. 

Three things help me in such times.  Writing, gardening, and cooking.  Following a week of heat that has held much of the country in its grip, I awoke to rain last Sunday that kept me out of our garden for much of the day. To lift my spirits, I spent the morning reading about the history of Damson plums, caramel pie and Depression-era pies that include Chess Pie—as basic as a pie can be—Vinegar Pie, Buttermilk Pie and Pickle Pie.

What these recipes all have in common fits both the nature of the nation’s pulse these days and the current economic realities.  No frills, no nuts or exotic fruit--they were “j’es pie” (one of the possible origins of the name “chess” pie). Vinegar Pies go back even earlier to pioneers in Western Kansas living in sod houses. They were made in the winter when the supply of dried fruit in the larder was gone. Butter, sugar, flour, eggs, vinegar and a touch of nutmeg, cinnamon or cloves are the basic ingredients in these simply delicious pies.

Terry Thompson, author of “A Taste of the South,” believes these pies have their origins in the South where the subject of desserts can turn quickly from an innocent comment overhead and expounded upon by another, then another, until a full-blown seminar is underway. “Overindulging in desserts,” Thompson concludes, “is one way of rewarding ourselves for surviving two Southern afflictions—the heat and mosquitoes.”  “Southerners,” Thompson continues, “have always been able to produce enticing desserts from whatever is on hand—sometimes from virtually nothing.”

This week I came across an article by Claiborne Milde entitled “Resurrecting Virginia’s Forgotten ‘Caramel’ Pie.”  The mention of damson plums and beloved chef Edna Lewis caught my attention immediately.  In 1959 when my family lived in McLean, VA a woman in Richmond wrote to her local newspaper’s food editor seeking a recipe for this once popular regional pie.  

Milde writes that many letters arrived from readers with recipes for damson caramel pie, “many attributing their recipes to their grandmothers or earlier, placing the heyday of the recipe to the 1800s and early 1900s. The filling is described as “smooth and sweet, but with something deeper and more complex.”  The recipes were similar.  “A generous measure of damson plum preserves—jam with an intensely plummy, almost spiced flavor—blended into a rich base of butter, eggs, sugar, and a dash of vanilla extract.”  Some included a scattering of cornmeal as a thickener, but none called for actual caramel. 

This once ubiquitous pie is included in Edna Lewis’ famous cookbooks that were love letters to her childhood home in Freetown, VA.  In my copy of The Taste of Country Cooking, Ms. Lewis wrote of her family’s damson plum tree: “It was a prolific bearer of hundreds of small plums, the shape of birds’ eggs, intense navy-blue with a purple tinge.”  Reading her description, I remembered that explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark noted finding small wild plums as they journeyed up and back down the Missouri River between 1804 and 1806, just five miles from our Breakfast Creek home where I discovered an old damson plum tree in the backyard.

Where did they come from and why are they little known today?  In Damsons: An Ancient Fruit in the Modern Kitchen, author Sarah Conrad Gothie suggests that the tree’s ancient roots and name damascene come from a region near Damascus, Syria, where it still grows. She writes that damson trees “have grown in England since recorded history” and “the English brought this orchard favorite to the American colonies…eventually spreading westward and throughout North America.” 

When I asked my high school friend Larry Marchant who still lives in Virginia about damson plums, he responded “I’m not able to recall such.”  But Heather, his Scottish wife, said “Sure. Damson plum jam, pies and more.”  He said, “Apparently in Scotland, Damson plums are more common, and so more often used in delicious Scottish cooking.”  

I remember biting into our Missouri damson plums years ago and finding the yellow fruit inside a bit sour, better suited for preserving or “putting up” with sugar as a condiment or jam. Gothie brings the circle round when she explains, “Damson caramel pie was a product of the rhythms of this seasonal preservation and likely evolved from English “cheesecakes”—later called chess pie—which kept well in pre-refrigeration times.

In times when the political and economic outlook seem as bleak as a January landscape and you hanker for a pie, a Depression-era chess pie, buttermilk pie or damson plum caramel pie might be just what’s needed to remind us of what was once both good and simple in life when times got truly tough.