September 18, 2024 • 37 mins
Anne Byrn stopped by the Atlanta studio to talk about her new book “Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories.” She shares what makes Southern baking special, regional baking histories, and the origin of key lime pie.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And Tracy our prior
and beloved guest. Ann Burne has a new book out yep.
(00:21):
That book is Baking in the American South, two hundred
Recipes and Their Untold Stories. And her last two historical
baking books, which were American Cake and American Cookie, were
very popular with our listeners, so of course we had
to have her back to talk about this book. Ann's
knowledge of baking is utterly unreal. She knows the history
of what seems like everything that has ever been baked,
(00:44):
and she's talked to everyone who has ever baked a things.
So this conversation is a mix of historical information and
some baking tips and if we're being very honest, things
that I was just playing curious about. Yeah, so let's
jump right in and burn thank you so much for
being back on the show. It's great to be here,
hauling you are, like, I don't want to talk bad
(01:05):
about any of my other guests, but you're my favorite
guest we have on the show. Oh that is honored.
It's true because you're delightful and you talk about delightful food,
and you're a really good food educator, which is what
I really love. Thank you. Your new book, Baking in
the American South, is a tome. It's big, it's full
(01:27):
of information. But what I love is that you open
it by telling the story of someone asking you why
Southern baking is so special when you were doing a
book event for a previous book you wrote, and it
stumped you a little bit. Why do you think it's
so hard to quantify what's special about Southern baking.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Because it's rooted in memory, and I think as a writer,
I was concerned that, you know, my memories were really
affecting my judgment there. You know, it's because my mother
was a fabulous cook and baker.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So I started thinking, am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I mean, maybe not everybody comes from that sort of
warm and fuzzy background. I mean, maybe the Midwest the
baking is just as good as it is in the South.
And so I got concerned. But the audience at that
book signing they really backed me up. I mean, hands
started going in the air, and it's your mother's recipe,
it's the land it's the people, it's the food. But
(02:23):
that was really the beginning of this project, you know,
and it was a perfect beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. One of the things that I really really have
always loved about your writing is you don't shy away
from any of the difficult or problematic parts of a
recipe story or a baking tradition story, and you kind
of bust the myth about the romanticized South and what
people think it is right out of the gate in
the introduction, Will you talk a little bit about that,
(02:50):
how we have this false memory as a culture about
what the South is and was. Yes, we do.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We think it's all Magnolia's and moonlight or whatever or
gone with the wind. But the South was largely poor
and rural and isolated and not very glamorous. And I
think for that reason, I opened the book with corn bread,
because it was the bread that fed people.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's the simple answer. There are when you say you
open the book with corn bread, that's a little bit
of an understatement because it's like an entire chapter of.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Does It twenty two to twenty four, I think, exactly
recipes for corn bread.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, it's fascinating, It is fascinating. Will you talk a
little bit about when you say it's what fed people,
why is it that bedrock? Because space recipe, because.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Corn grew everywhere in the South, and the you know,
Southern banking is tied to the land and to the people.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It's those two factors.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And corn bread is the land because corn could grow
pretty much in every of the fourteen states. People would
grow it in the back, they could grind it themselves
or mill it, have it milled locally, and you could
make corn gridle kegs corn bread. It filled people up.
And I think that that's a large part of Southern
baking is just getting fed and not being hungry, right,
(04:17):
And scarcity is another big part of Southern baking. And
corn kind of you know, made it possible to have
a meal and that's you know, made with lard smothered
with molasses.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It fed people.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And so that's that's why to me, corn bread is
started this book.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's also one of those great things that you alluded
to it by talking about using larder, molasses or whatever.
It bridges the divide between sweet and savory. It can
go anywhere it needs.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
To, bridges the divide between sweet and savory, and bridges
the divide between black and white and rich and poor.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I think corn bread is like the connection of all foods. Yeah,
it brings us together. It doesn't matter who you are,
where you're from. People love it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You also talk a little bit in the book about
varieties of corn, which informs this whole discussion of corn bread.
Will you talk a little bit about how all the
different kinds of corn impact all of these recipes in
what we know about how to cook with it? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I mean there were old varieties of corn like bloody butcher,
which is red and you love that. You'd have to
love that one, and hickory king which is hard white,
and pencil cob, which was yellow, and I think it's
just don't you just love the names of all these
John Hawk And So I think of that agriculturally, a
(05:45):
type of corn might have grown in a certain area
of the South, and so that became the corn that
was ground that was used in the corn bread for
that region. And I think even today, when I interviewed
people across the region, I found that there were certain
parts of the South that were prone to bake with
yellow cornmeal. West Tennessee, Arkansas, East Texas, whereas there are
(06:07):
other regions of the South Mississippi, Middle Tennessee, North Carolina
that lane to white cornmeal and a lot of it
had to do with that's what was grown in the area.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, there's another thing that I really I mean, I
love many things in this book, but you very transparently
talk about how to measure ingredients and how you measured
ingredients for these recipes.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I know a lot of us who are not Ann
Burns will read a recipe and when we read like
one cup of brown sugar packed, it's like, well, how packed?
How dunsley do we? And you lay out for all
of the key ingredients like what those words mean in
this book. But I also have to marvel a bit
because you're talking about that and like the precision of baking.
(06:53):
At the same time, a lot of your book talks
about how this is a baking tradition from memory alone.
Lot of people that didn't really measure, measured with their
heart and eyes. How did that work? Is it alchemy?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
There is alchemy and banking for sure, And I think
I tried to touch on both of those aspects, Holly,
because on one hand, we know our grandmothers might not
have measured or they used a teacup to measure flour,
or did they dig down in the sack and pull
it up which was just brimming with flour, or did
(07:29):
they spoon it and level it off.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
You're right, it all depends.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
On the maker, and we don't know what the maker made.
But we can test the recipes today and make sure
they work.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And then when I.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Give you the recipe, I can give you the option of,
you know, two cups of flour or two hundred and
forty grams of flour. Right, And so if you want
to be really precise, get a digital scale and there
you go, and you can make all the biscuits, cornbread, yeast, rolls, cakes,
whatever you want in my book with precision. Or if
(08:03):
you don't want to do that, keep using your cups, right,
and this is how I measure a cup.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, I feel like you have also solved the question
that many people are always asking, like why were my
grandmother's biscuits the best biscuits I ever had? It's like, well,
she had her version of measuring, and nobody else had
quite the same amount. Everybody probably had slightly different rations, and.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
It mystifies a lot of people because that was that
scenario was throughout this book, trying to create recipes that
are out of memory.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, this is as I said, you're such a good
food and cooking communicator. And one of the things that
you talk about early on in the book that I
was like, how have I never bumped into this before?
Was the idea of slow ovens and quick ovens and
how that translates to the ovens we're using today that
(08:57):
are much more precise. Right, Well, you talk about that
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, I have a like I think it's a table
in the in the introduction part of the book that
came from a writer out of Kentucky, and he was
the one and I credit him. He was the one
who who shared the understanding your oven And so a
slow oven in grandmother's recipes is three hundred degrees moderate
(09:24):
three point fifty quick oven. That's what my grandmother us
to call it quick or hot oven that's four hundred
and very hot for fifty. But I think if you're
looking at old recipes, family recipes and you see these terms,
that's how you know you can set your oven today.
Because not all ovens had thermostats. Ovens have not always
been born with thermostats. Thermostats came later. And I think
(09:48):
another part of it is, you know, obviously there were
wood fired ovens and coal fired ovens and gas ovens
than electric ovens, and I think that that's why I
think the wood fired oven could be why the South
has made such great biscuits because that high heat of
that oven. Think about that makes that quick rise. It
(10:11):
creates a lot of steam and a wet dough and
the biscuits go straight up. And several of the biscuit
recipes in the chapter use like a five hundred degree oven,
and it's really trying to mimic an old wood fired oven.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's really fun. Do you have a favorite biscuit recipe?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Of a lot of them, because I have about twenty
four of those too. Well, I know you one of
the things you talk about with some of the people
who you've interviewed and who shared their recipes, like they
have myriad different favorite biscuit recipes depending on what it's
going to be used for with would you talk about
that a little bit? Definitely?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I think Natalie Duprieve was the one. Yeah, I love Natalie,
and I asked her that question early. You know, what's
your favorite biscuit, you know, what's the best way to
make biscuits? And her reply was, well, it just depends
on what you're doing with the biscuit. Are you putting
a slice of pork tenderloin in it?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
You know? Are you putting a piece of fried chicken
in it? You know?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Are you just smearing it with honey? And I think
that's really true, because there can be very crispy, crunchy
biscuits baked at high heat, and a cat heead biscuit
is just a big old drop biscuit, you know, and
it got lots of craggly edges. But then you can
also make cake pan biscuits, like Shirley Corrier's recipe that's
(11:27):
very wet dough, but they're all squeezed in like a
nine inch cake pan, and so when they bake up together,
they all smoosh together like they're in an elevator or something,
and then you pull them apart. And so, you know,
if you like the soft in the center kind of biscuit,
that's your recipe. If you like something crispy and crnchy
(11:49):
and tall, you know, go for Scott Peacock's biscuits. Or
the cat head biscuits. So it just really depends on
what you gravitates, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
The most where it's going. There is another technique you
talk about in the book that I feel foolish because
I don't know that I've ever seen it called this
before or understood what it was, which is the falling
oven technique. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And I'm like, oh,
this is genius, but also one So I want you
to explain what that is for our listeners and also, uh,
(12:20):
just for my own personal interest. Is that hard to
regulate given that some ovens will retain heat longer than others? Like,
is there a trick to learning when you need to
adjust for your own kitchen? Probably?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
And yet ovens do differ, you know, think about it.
Some ovens preheat in fifteen minutes, some take ten, some
take twenty. I had one that at one time that
took twenty five minutes to preheat, and you drove me crazy.
So it's not as scientific as you'd like. But a
falling oven is sort of trying to mimic what we're
talking about wood fired ovens, trying to mimic that whole idea,
(12:56):
because if you had a wood fired oven. It started
out hotter, right, and it would later you know, as
you were baking something longer, the temperature in the oven
would reduce, it would get cooler. And that's kind of
what the falling oven technique is. Maybe to start a
recipe a cake at a higher heat to promote browning,
or a bread that's very dense, and then bake it
(13:17):
for thirty minutes at three seventy five four hundred, and
then you turn it down while you never move it
out of the oven. You just reduce the oven heat
to three point fifty and then twenty minutes later you
reduce it to three hundred, and then twenty minutes later.
And that's that is to set a recipe for bread, cake, whatever,
(13:40):
and then to be able to cook it to the
center without it getting too dark and too overcooked on
the outside and not done in the middle.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's called the steering a piece of meat, but in baking, yeah,
it's definitely.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And then there's the reverse of that, which is the
cold oven method, which is used for pancakes. You actually
put the pound cake in a not preheated oven and
then once it's in, you turned it on to three
point fifty and Essentially that cake is going to start
baking as the oven heats up, and that's called a
(14:14):
cold oven technique.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And then does that keep it more dense as it goes.
It's not the right exactly it cakes.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It makes a very compact texture, finely grained, and it
came out of the nineteen thirties when a lot of
people were scared of and trying to also be economical
about baking with gas.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah yeah, and not using as much. I feel like
this entire book is a little bit of a love
letter to the South and Southern baking, because you have
spoken with it seems like every single person who has
(14:57):
put edition in an oven, you know, oh, all of
the people who are kind of famous in Southern baking.
You seem to know when every single recipe started and when.
And it feels both very thoughtful and carefully planned out
and also very joyful. To me, It's a very joyful read.
And you are a woman of the South. So I
wonder did you find yourself kind of falling in love
(15:20):
with Southern baking in a new way? Did it change
your relationship with all of these recipes, which you were
probably mostly exposed to before you started the project.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yes, it made me absolutely fall in love with the South,
the entire region, and embrace our differences. I found that
there was much greater diversity in the baking of the
South than I ever imagined, and as quirky as something
like a cherry nut pie and a chocolate tomatoes sheep
(15:52):
cakes or possum pie is from Arkansas. I mean, after
making these recipes, how can I not love them?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
You know?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I am a Tennessee and you know, fifth generation,
but I fell in love with West Virginia and a
grandmother Bailey's you know, gingerbread recipe, and I fell in
love with so much of South Carolina baking that I
didn't know. I didn't grow up in the low country, right,
But just their love and how they've incorporated rice and
(16:24):
so many recipes, and just the hardships I think that
people went through. If you read about other people's lives
through these recipes, it does make you so much more
empathetic to what other people have gone through through time.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, it is such an intertwining of heart and heart
throughout the whole thing. It's really beautiful. It's a good
way to put it. Will you tell us? Kind of
the short version of I'm glad you mentioned South Carolina,
the Carolina rice story, and how important that is not
just to the South but really to the nation in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, very much so, I mean South Carolina. It's a
complicated story because rice production took place in South Carolina
because the climate, because of soil, and also because of
the enslaved people who were forced to come here from
the western coast of Africa, which is called has been
called the rice coast. So they were brought to South
(17:18):
Carolina in the seventeen hundreds. They had not only a
knowledge of rice cultivation, and they actually did the physical
labor of digging canals and excavating, removing tree roots, miles
and miles of work and backbreaking work, but they also
were subject to malaria and all of the elements in
(17:40):
that hot and human cuisine. These people also brought a
knowledge and memories of a rice based cuisine, and so
it only makes sense then that the breads, the croquettes,
the waffles of that area would be based on rice
that was accessible. That's what they knew. And you see
(18:02):
other influences in rice, like in New Orleans, the claws
mot of a Caribbean and African influence into New Orleans cooking,
and I think it's just it's a very rich part
of the South. It's a it's a to read about
and to research it. It's a tragic part, you know,
(18:24):
of our history, but it has been an integral part
of Southern banking.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, I mean this is a through line with you know,
your other books about American cake and American cookies, where
you're very open about a lot of the things that
we have adopted and think like these are Americana recipes
are really ones that came from Africa during the slave trade,
which is right fascinating to think about, because I think
most people don't think about them that way unless they're
(18:52):
really looking for the history. So I'm grateful because it
makes us kind of reframe what all of that means. Well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
But at rice and cane both are important ingredients in
Southern banking, but they're you know, they have their dark history.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah. We have also talked a little bit on the
show before about enrichment programs, but I am ceaselessly fascinated.
So will you tell us a little bit from you know,
your expertise, what those what enrichment programs were when it
came to baking and why they happened.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And you're talking about the b vitamins and nios and yes,
I think it's yes. And because we had a corn
based diet in the South, and corn bread, you know,
corn wasn't we did not provide all of the nutrients
necessary and did not provide niisin in particular, and so
(19:45):
there was a lot of malnutrition and pelagra in the South.
And so it was sadly found most often in very
poor communities and in in the diets prisons, and yeah
and so, and have you done shows about this.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I'm sure it's come up. It has never been the
focal point, but I know we have talked about it
in you know, sort of the developmental stage and how
and when it happened.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right, And I can't remember exactly what year it was
that these studies took place, but they started to actually
some scientists started looking into, you know, the diet and
what was causing you know, these deficiencies. And I don't
think they pinpointed it until tragically they actually studied the
prison diets and gave the prisoners and one group, you know,
(20:35):
had had a more balanced diet and the other had
just the diet based on corn and that's where that's
where it was found.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
And then the federal government.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Got involved and in our grains in the US were
enriched and that was called the enrichment programs. Interestingly, now
that we've kind of gone swung back to some of
the old heirloom ground if you think about it, or
going instead of buying big flour that's been enriched, there
(21:06):
has been a trend in the last five years or
less in baking breads with locally grown flour or people
grinding their own wheat, grinding their own corn, and so
it is going to be unenriched. But I think that
our diet as a whole today is much more varied
than it used to be.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, we have access to anything we could dream of. Vitamins, yes,
and vitamins. I want to talk more about recipes. This
one is truly in service to my marriage because it's
my husband's very favorite thing and I actually had not
ever looked into it. Will you tell us about where
key lime pie came from and its origin because its
origin is actually also a little it's a little gray.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's a little gray, yes, And I think on that recipe, well,
we know key lime pie came from Flora, the Keys,
that's right, and from the Keys, and I think it
speaks to canned milk more than anything. So I think
you look at you look at the recipe, and that
kind of is an example of how I went about
sort of sleuthing and looking for the story behind these recipes,
(22:09):
is that you look at the recipe and what are
the key ingredients in that. Well, it's key lime, juice
and eggs and sweetened condensed milk, and so sweetened condensed
milk was an ingredient of the islands and the coasts
because you know that if you didn't have access to
fresh milk, you know, you use canned milk. And the
Keys were cut off from the rest of Florida for
(22:30):
a long time, and it wasn't until railroads came in,
and then with hurricanes coming into the Keys routinely through
the years, you knowes bridges would get washed out.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So they still do. They still do.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
This is right, Nothing much has changed, But I think
that that was a shelf stable recipe. But it is
that story, the story that's in here and I'm searching for.
It was the family and it was the man who
owned all of like the hardware stores, yeah did he
And he cornered the market on all the sweet and
condensed milk, right, And it was his cook who actually
(23:06):
and he owned three or four mansions.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Have you done stories on him?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
No, and think you kind of need to because there's uh, yeah,
there's I actually tracked down a chef historian in Florida.
It was David Bailey, I think is his name. And
then the then there was like an island the Keys,
longtime resident. This guy was named David Sloan and the
(23:33):
New York Times interviewed him, that's what it was, and
he talked about William Bill money Curry. That was the
name of the guy who made his fortune in stockpiling
sweetened condense milk. But it was his cook who's supposedly
made the first key LAMPI delicious cook.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
We love it the most. Okay, this is another selfish question,
a burn. Why did I have to be in my
fifties before I found out about Cantelope cream pie? Why
were you holding out on me? Well, Holly, I was
in my sixties when I found out. I don't you
ever been so excited to see a recipe of my life?
And not ever have heard of it before. I felt
(24:13):
the same way. I felt like it was a Christmas present. Yes, yes,
do you know what I mean? Yeah, because I love cantalope. Yes,
I love it too.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I love the Athena melons right like in July when
they come in season.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
All of it so sweet. And that was one of
those recipes.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
People asked me too, like how many times do you
test a recipe that goes in the cookbook And I'll say, well,
it depends on the recipe. Well, let me tell you this.
This recipe took about twelve times, but we were I
was insistent because I knew there was something here, right,
I knew.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I knew what this pie was going to taste like.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was going to taste like cantalope, and it was
going to have this big meringue on it. But it
was you have to have enough juice that goes into
the custard that you stir on the top of the
stove for the filling, and so you really need need
to use a really ripe cantalope. And that's the story
behind the spot this pie is it is it talks
(25:07):
to us about railroads and what railroads brought to the South,
and they brought ingredients because you could be living in nowhere, Alabama,
and all of a sudden you could get access to
cantalopes that maybe had come in from East Texas and
it was because of the railroads. And then the railroad
(25:28):
cars would also have access. And some of the trains
that had the passenger trains that had dining in them,
these there were cooks on board, and the cooks would
actually use ingredients that they had picked up at the
last stop. And this canalope pie story is one of
a cook who had a surplus of ripe canalopes and
(25:51):
there's only so much he could cut up for breakfast
and needed to use it up. And it was not
only he felt like he needed to use up and
he didn't want it to go to waste, but they
are actually his job sort of depended on it, and
he needed to show his bosses that he had the ability.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You talk about the ultimate mystery bass right right? Make
a pie with this? Yeah, whatever we picked up at
the last one. Yeah, listen, I'll make cantalope things all
the time. You love it. Cantalope syrup is one of
my favorite things to me for a cocktail. It's so good.
Yeuh oh. A collins made with candilope syrup is like
summer to me. Nice yes, And then your leftover cantilope
(26:30):
from it is like a compot you can spread on
whatever toast cantalope everything. My husband is allergic, too bad.
I will eat all the cantalope. Are there any recipes
(26:52):
I haven't hit on that you want to talk about
because you love them so much or think they're especially
important parts of this story? Wow?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Well we've talked a bunch of pie. That's so interesting.
Pie has come up, you know. I do love the
pudding chapter, I think, And someone has said, you know,
I think this is the first cookbook I pulled out
and you have an entire chapter dedicated to pudding. And
I do putting you think is British, you know, and
the whole category of desserts is called pudding, you know,
(27:21):
for the Brits. But I'm talking about the soft and creamy,
comforty set.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
And so that's what I've got.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So it's a mixture of banana pudding, which is probably
the South's number one dessert, and bananas. That is also
a railroad recipe. Banana's coming up from Mobile in New
Orleans into the rest of the country. But also rice pudding,
which is old old that's I've got an old Maryland recipe,
and that recipe came out of an old cookbook that
(27:48):
was written after the Civil War, which then informed me
how a lot of the first cookbooks in the South
were written as charitable cookbooks and it was written as
relief for and they unknowingly have preserved the recipes of
the South, the nineteenth century recipes, because they wrote them down.
(28:11):
And I think we were talking earlier about how not
all cultures, not all the people that came into the
South wrote down recipes. There are a lot of them.
The English and the Scottish and the Irish, you know,
they were all talk you know, storytellers. They didn't write
things down. The German cooks that came into the South
(28:31):
through them in West and down through you know, Kentucky, Tennessee,
they wrote things down. The Jewish cooks you know that
came into the South through Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, they
wrote things down, and they also remembered them, and they
repeated recipes during the holidays. So I think that those
early cookbooks helped preserve the recipes and a lot of
(28:54):
the pudding recipes come out of those early books.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I love it. You also share a recipe that is
your mom's recipe. Oh I do well. You talk about
that a lot. Yeah, we actually I think there's two.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
There's the chest cake and then HER's her banana bread
as well.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Banana bread.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, banana bread is because that's our personal favorite. That
was just how do I get this banana bread recipe
in the book? And it goes into quick bread chapter.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's a great banana bread recipe. It's real easy to do,
and it's oil not you know, butter. I think it
makes a fuller flavored banana bread. And then there's a
chestcake recipe in the cake chapter, and that's the it's
like a bar, it's like a blondie, but it's We
call it chest cake in Middle Tennessee because it has
the gooey consistency of like a chest pie.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Gotcha. That one caught my eye because it just looked
really the photography in this book, thank you, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Red Allen out of Atlanta, I mean Athens, Georgia was
a photography.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
It's beautiful. Yeah, she's quite talented. Fact like everything looks
really buttery and delicious. It was buttery. It's a mouth
watering set of pictures for sure, thank you. And as
I said, it's a tone. That's a lot of work. Yeah,
it's two hundred recipes boring behind the veil. Question about
that when you're doing photography for one of your books,
(30:16):
especially in like this, are those situations where you are
churning out those recipes and dressing them for photography or
do you have a bunch of helpers? Is it you
and the photographer? How does that work? Well?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
It was both this time because we had two weeks
of photoshoots.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
That's not enough. There are a million recipes in here, correct, Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And the first week we had a fabulous stylist, Tammy
Hardiman and hers assistant, Angela Hinkel. They were fantastic. So
let me tell you. The first week we did every
complicated recipe in a book because I needed them. We
did all most of the pause because Angela was just
fluting and crafting the crust and Tammy did all the
(31:00):
flourishes on top. But I also was in the kitchens
during custard and making things. The next week they went
by BA and it was me and so that we.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Did all the biscuits and the corn bread.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So I did. It's my hands that are in the
book rolling the biscuit dough. So I think it's a
little bit of both. We had some mishaps. You're going
to the oven in the studio, I had a hot
spoted and on the left hand side, that beautiful pecan
piw recipes Zephyr Wrights pecan piwer recipe got sort of
(31:35):
torched on the left hand corner. Oh, and it was
so gorgeous. So you know, what do you do?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You crop it three quarters and grape a beautiful flower
over it. Exactly these things anything can be fixed, right,
and you would never know because the photograph does look
absolutely gorgeous. Thank you. My last question, I think I've
asked you this every time we've done one of these,
and this one is a long haul book. You took
a long time writing this, and as I said, you
(32:02):
talked to what appears to be one million people. What
was your biggest surprise along the way, because it is
such an incredibly rich I.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Mean, well, I think back to the fact that the
South is much more diverse, or the food, the baking
from the South, is way more diverse than I ever
ever imagined. The other takeaway was that I, being a
native Southerner, have have just warm and fuzzy feelings about
all of these recipes. Right When I look at a
(32:34):
meringue pie, I think I'm a mother. When I look
at a pound cake, I think I'm a grandmother. When
I look at at spoon bread, which is like a
corn souflet, I think of the other grandmother and so.
But what I learned is that not everybody has those
same feelings. And that was part of the story that
I wanted to tell, that much of Southern baking has
been done by people who were not baking out of joy,
(32:56):
and they were baking because they were forced to. Were
baking in in black cooks, who were baking in other
women's kitchen, white women's kitchen, and then they had to
go home and bake and cook for their own family
and raise their own children. And I always knew these things,
but I don't think it really hit home for me
(33:18):
that not everything that I consider joyful and comforting other
people feel the same way, right, And I honor that.
I do honor that, But there's got to be recipes
that they do find joyful. And I found that poundcakes
to the back black community, especially tea cakes are held
(33:40):
in very hostained peach cobbler. Yes, so that we're all
I've learned that, you know, we're all different, we can
all have you know, memories, we can all collectively come
together and appreciate a style of baking from a region
that may not be anything like we imagine it is,
(34:03):
and that we're probably more alike than we are different.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, oh, I love it. Thank you for being here
with me, but also thank you for this book. I
feel like this is the book I didn't know I
really really wanted, like it's it's like a Christmas gift
for it to exist. So for all of my historical bakers,
there's you need it, just trust I Literally, I'm staring
at the page for the New Orleans kincake recipeing, going, well,
(34:29):
I can make that in September. That's not right, you
can start now for January. Thank you so much, Anne,
Thank you, Hollyes Oh the best, the best. Thank you
once more to Anne Burn for her wonderful stories and
baking advice. The new book once Again is Baking in
the American South, two hundred recipes and they're untold stories
(34:51):
and that's available anywhere books are sold. And you can
also find Anne at annburn dot com that is a
N N E B y r N and on Instagram
at Anburn and on Twitter at Anneburn. Sign up for
her newsletter It's so good. Since we have baking talk,
(35:12):
I thought it would be fun for listener mail to
do one from one of our listeners who said it
was silly, but it was also really quite charming to me. Okay,
this is from our listener Sarah, and she writes, you say,
you're not picky about what mail we send you, so
I thought i'd send you this little thing that made
me smile. I'd ordered from Too Good to Go, an
(35:35):
app that sells discounted mystery bags from local restaurants of
food that would otherwise have to be thrown out the
next day, I paid six ninety nine to see what
Whole Foods would give me. On a Friday night after
a long week, it was about a twenty minute drive
from the train station after work, so I was catching
up on Wednesday's episode that would have been our episode
on Carvio Montero, and Sarah continues, When I opened my bag,
(35:59):
what was the first thing I pulled out. Portuguese rolls, fluffy,
soft carbs, and a funny coincidence. Now that's a great
way to start a weekend. In case you're curious, the
bag also has mini chocolate hazelnut beignets, a large chibbatta loaf,
and some cherry turnovers. Definitely worth the price of admission.
I hope you have a great weekend. That is very cool,
and I like that this is eliminating food waste. Yeah.
(36:22):
I know some bakeries and restaurants will turn over their
stuff to shelters, yeah, or food banks. But yeah, some
municipalities don't let you do that. Sometimes based on ingredients,
you're not allowed to do that. I think.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, we have a food rescue group here where I
live that does sort of a loop of grocery stores
and restaurants and stuff and picks up a lot of
food that would otherwise be discarded and then takes it
to shelters where they have grab and go meals and
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, which also harkens back to a previous episode on
a Gusta Scoffier, because as far as we could tell,
he was the first chef that actually started tradition. So, Sarah,
thank you for sharing your delicious picture of roles with us. Man.
I love a carb. Yeah they don't almost love me back,
but I love them. If you would like to write
(37:12):
to us to share whatever you're eating, or your pets,
or just things you think about history, you can do
so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And Tracy our prior
and beloved guest. Ann Burne has a new book out yep.
(00:21):
That book is Baking in the American South, two hundred
Recipes and Their Untold Stories. And her last two historical
baking books, which were American Cake and American Cookie, were
very popular with our listeners, so of course we had
to have her back to talk about this book. Ann's
knowledge of baking is utterly unreal. She knows the history
of what seems like everything that has ever been baked,
(00:44):
and she's talked to everyone who has ever baked a things.
So this conversation is a mix of historical information and
some baking tips and if we're being very honest, things
that I was just playing curious about. Yeah, so let's
jump right in and burn thank you so much for
being back on the show. It's great to be here,
hauling you are, like, I don't want to talk bad
(01:05):
about any of my other guests, but you're my favorite
guest we have on the show. Oh that is honored.
It's true because you're delightful and you talk about delightful food,
and you're a really good food educator, which is what
I really love. Thank you. Your new book, Baking in
the American South, is a tome. It's big, it's full
(01:27):
of information. But what I love is that you open
it by telling the story of someone asking you why
Southern baking is so special when you were doing a
book event for a previous book you wrote, and it
stumped you a little bit. Why do you think it's
so hard to quantify what's special about Southern baking.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Because it's rooted in memory, and I think as a writer,
I was concerned that, you know, my memories were really
affecting my judgment there. You know, it's because my mother
was a fabulous cook and baker.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So I started thinking, am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I mean, maybe not everybody comes from that sort of
warm and fuzzy background. I mean, maybe the Midwest the
baking is just as good as it is in the South.
And so I got concerned. But the audience at that
book signing they really backed me up. I mean, hands
started going in the air, and it's your mother's recipe,
it's the land it's the people, it's the food. But
(02:23):
that was really the beginning of this project, you know,
and it was a perfect beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. One of the things that I really really have
always loved about your writing is you don't shy away
from any of the difficult or problematic parts of a
recipe story or a baking tradition story, and you kind
of bust the myth about the romanticized South and what
people think it is right out of the gate in
the introduction, Will you talk a little bit about that,
(02:50):
how we have this false memory as a culture about
what the South is and was. Yes, we do.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We think it's all Magnolia's and moonlight or whatever or
gone with the wind. But the South was largely poor
and rural and isolated and not very glamorous. And I
think for that reason, I opened the book with corn bread,
because it was the bread that fed people.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's the simple answer. There are when you say you
open the book with corn bread, that's a little bit
of an understatement because it's like an entire chapter of.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Does It twenty two to twenty four, I think, exactly
recipes for corn bread.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, it's fascinating, It is fascinating. Will you talk a
little bit about when you say it's what fed people,
why is it that bedrock? Because space recipe, because.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Corn grew everywhere in the South, and the you know,
Southern banking is tied to the land and to the people.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It's those two factors.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And corn bread is the land because corn could grow
pretty much in every of the fourteen states. People would
grow it in the back, they could grind it themselves
or mill it, have it milled locally, and you could
make corn gridle kegs corn bread. It filled people up.
And I think that that's a large part of Southern
baking is just getting fed and not being hungry, right,
(04:17):
And scarcity is another big part of Southern baking. And
corn kind of you know, made it possible to have
a meal and that's you know, made with lard smothered
with molasses.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It fed people.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And so that's that's why to me, corn bread is
started this book.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's also one of those great things that you alluded
to it by talking about using larder, molasses or whatever.
It bridges the divide between sweet and savory. It can
go anywhere it needs.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
To, bridges the divide between sweet and savory, and bridges
the divide between black and white and rich and poor.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I think corn bread is like the connection of all foods. Yeah,
it brings us together. It doesn't matter who you are,
where you're from. People love it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You also talk a little bit in the book about
varieties of corn, which informs this whole discussion of corn bread.
Will you talk a little bit about how all the
different kinds of corn impact all of these recipes in
what we know about how to cook with it? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I mean there were old varieties of corn like bloody butcher,
which is red and you love that. You'd have to
love that one, and hickory king which is hard white,
and pencil cob, which was yellow, and I think it's
just don't you just love the names of all these
John Hawk And So I think of that agriculturally, a
(05:45):
type of corn might have grown in a certain area
of the South, and so that became the corn that
was ground that was used in the corn bread for
that region. And I think even today, when I interviewed
people across the region, I found that there were certain
parts of the South that were prone to bake with
yellow cornmeal. West Tennessee, Arkansas, East Texas, whereas there are
(06:07):
other regions of the South Mississippi, Middle Tennessee, North Carolina
that lane to white cornmeal and a lot of it
had to do with that's what was grown in the area.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, there's another thing that I really I mean, I
love many things in this book, but you very transparently
talk about how to measure ingredients and how you measured
ingredients for these recipes.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I know a lot of us who are not Ann
Burns will read a recipe and when we read like
one cup of brown sugar packed, it's like, well, how packed?
How dunsley do we? And you lay out for all
of the key ingredients like what those words mean in
this book. But I also have to marvel a bit
because you're talking about that and like the precision of baking.
(06:53):
At the same time, a lot of your book talks
about how this is a baking tradition from memory alone.
Lot of people that didn't really measure, measured with their
heart and eyes. How did that work? Is it alchemy?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
There is alchemy and banking for sure, And I think
I tried to touch on both of those aspects, Holly,
because on one hand, we know our grandmothers might not
have measured or they used a teacup to measure flour,
or did they dig down in the sack and pull
it up which was just brimming with flour, or did
(07:29):
they spoon it and level it off.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
You're right, it all depends.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
On the maker, and we don't know what the maker made.
But we can test the recipes today and make sure
they work.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And then when I.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Give you the recipe, I can give you the option of,
you know, two cups of flour or two hundred and
forty grams of flour. Right, And so if you want
to be really precise, get a digital scale and there
you go, and you can make all the biscuits, cornbread, yeast, rolls, cakes,
whatever you want in my book with precision. Or if
(08:03):
you don't want to do that, keep using your cups, right,
and this is how I measure a cup.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, I feel like you have also solved the question
that many people are always asking, like why were my
grandmother's biscuits the best biscuits I ever had? It's like, well,
she had her version of measuring, and nobody else had
quite the same amount. Everybody probably had slightly different rations, and.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
It mystifies a lot of people because that was that
scenario was throughout this book, trying to create recipes that
are out of memory.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, this is as I said, you're such a good
food and cooking communicator. And one of the things that
you talk about early on in the book that I
was like, how have I never bumped into this before?
Was the idea of slow ovens and quick ovens and
how that translates to the ovens we're using today that
(08:57):
are much more precise. Right, Well, you talk about that
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, I have a like I think it's a table
in the in the introduction part of the book that
came from a writer out of Kentucky, and he was
the one and I credit him. He was the one
who who shared the understanding your oven And so a
slow oven in grandmother's recipes is three hundred degrees moderate
(09:24):
three point fifty quick oven. That's what my grandmother us
to call it quick or hot oven that's four hundred
and very hot for fifty. But I think if you're
looking at old recipes, family recipes and you see these terms,
that's how you know you can set your oven today.
Because not all ovens had thermostats. Ovens have not always
been born with thermostats. Thermostats came later. And I think
(09:48):
another part of it is, you know, obviously there were
wood fired ovens and coal fired ovens and gas ovens
than electric ovens, and I think that that's why I
think the wood fired oven could be why the South
has made such great biscuits because that high heat of
that oven. Think about that makes that quick rise. It
(10:11):
creates a lot of steam and a wet dough and
the biscuits go straight up. And several of the biscuit
recipes in the chapter use like a five hundred degree oven,
and it's really trying to mimic an old wood fired oven.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's really fun. Do you have a favorite biscuit recipe?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Of a lot of them, because I have about twenty
four of those too. Well, I know you one of
the things you talk about with some of the people
who you've interviewed and who shared their recipes, like they
have myriad different favorite biscuit recipes depending on what it's
going to be used for with would you talk about
that a little bit? Definitely?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I think Natalie Duprieve was the one. Yeah, I love Natalie,
and I asked her that question early. You know, what's
your favorite biscuit, you know, what's the best way to
make biscuits? And her reply was, well, it just depends
on what you're doing with the biscuit. Are you putting
a slice of pork tenderloin in it?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
You know? Are you putting a piece of fried chicken
in it? You know?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Are you just smearing it with honey? And I think
that's really true, because there can be very crispy, crunchy
biscuits baked at high heat, and a cat heead biscuit
is just a big old drop biscuit, you know, and
it got lots of craggly edges. But then you can
also make cake pan biscuits, like Shirley Corrier's recipe that's
(11:27):
very wet dough, but they're all squeezed in like a
nine inch cake pan, and so when they bake up together,
they all smoosh together like they're in an elevator or something,
and then you pull them apart. And so, you know,
if you like the soft in the center kind of biscuit,
that's your recipe. If you like something crispy and crnchy
(11:49):
and tall, you know, go for Scott Peacock's biscuits. Or
the cat head biscuits. So it just really depends on
what you gravitates, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
The most where it's going. There is another technique you
talk about in the book that I feel foolish because
I don't know that I've ever seen it called this
before or understood what it was, which is the falling
oven technique. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And I'm like, oh,
this is genius, but also one So I want you
to explain what that is for our listeners and also, uh,
(12:20):
just for my own personal interest. Is that hard to
regulate given that some ovens will retain heat longer than others? Like,
is there a trick to learning when you need to
adjust for your own kitchen? Probably?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
And yet ovens do differ, you know, think about it.
Some ovens preheat in fifteen minutes, some take ten, some
take twenty. I had one that at one time that
took twenty five minutes to preheat, and you drove me crazy.
So it's not as scientific as you'd like. But a
falling oven is sort of trying to mimic what we're
talking about wood fired ovens, trying to mimic that whole idea,
(12:56):
because if you had a wood fired oven. It started
out hotter, right, and it would later you know, as
you were baking something longer, the temperature in the oven
would reduce, it would get cooler. And that's kind of
what the falling oven technique is. Maybe to start a
recipe a cake at a higher heat to promote browning,
or a bread that's very dense, and then bake it
(13:17):
for thirty minutes at three seventy five four hundred, and
then you turn it down while you never move it
out of the oven. You just reduce the oven heat
to three point fifty and then twenty minutes later you
reduce it to three hundred, and then twenty minutes later.
And that's that is to set a recipe for bread, cake, whatever,
(13:40):
and then to be able to cook it to the
center without it getting too dark and too overcooked on
the outside and not done in the middle.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's called the steering a piece of meat, but in baking, yeah,
it's definitely.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And then there's the reverse of that, which is the
cold oven method, which is used for pancakes. You actually
put the pound cake in a not preheated oven and
then once it's in, you turned it on to three
point fifty and Essentially that cake is going to start
baking as the oven heats up, and that's called a
(14:14):
cold oven technique.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And then does that keep it more dense as it goes.
It's not the right exactly it cakes.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It makes a very compact texture, finely grained, and it
came out of the nineteen thirties when a lot of
people were scared of and trying to also be economical
about baking with gas.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah yeah, and not using as much. I feel like
this entire book is a little bit of a love
letter to the South and Southern baking, because you have
spoken with it seems like every single person who has
(14:57):
put edition in an oven, you know, oh, all of
the people who are kind of famous in Southern baking.
You seem to know when every single recipe started and when.
And it feels both very thoughtful and carefully planned out
and also very joyful. To me, It's a very joyful read.
And you are a woman of the South. So I
wonder did you find yourself kind of falling in love
(15:20):
with Southern baking in a new way? Did it change
your relationship with all of these recipes, which you were
probably mostly exposed to before you started the project.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yes, it made me absolutely fall in love with the South,
the entire region, and embrace our differences. I found that
there was much greater diversity in the baking of the
South than I ever imagined, and as quirky as something
like a cherry nut pie and a chocolate tomatoes sheep
(15:52):
cakes or possum pie is from Arkansas. I mean, after
making these recipes, how can I not love them?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
You know?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I am a Tennessee and you know, fifth generation,
but I fell in love with West Virginia and a
grandmother Bailey's you know, gingerbread recipe, and I fell in
love with so much of South Carolina baking that I
didn't know. I didn't grow up in the low country, right,
But just their love and how they've incorporated rice and
(16:24):
so many recipes, and just the hardships I think that
people went through. If you read about other people's lives
through these recipes, it does make you so much more
empathetic to what other people have gone through through time.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, it is such an intertwining of heart and heart
throughout the whole thing. It's really beautiful. It's a good
way to put it. Will you tell us? Kind of
the short version of I'm glad you mentioned South Carolina,
the Carolina rice story, and how important that is not
just to the South but really to the nation in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, very much so, I mean South Carolina. It's a
complicated story because rice production took place in South Carolina
because the climate, because of soil, and also because of
the enslaved people who were forced to come here from
the western coast of Africa, which is called has been
called the rice coast. So they were brought to South
(17:18):
Carolina in the seventeen hundreds. They had not only a
knowledge of rice cultivation, and they actually did the physical
labor of digging canals and excavating, removing tree roots, miles
and miles of work and backbreaking work, but they also
were subject to malaria and all of the elements in
(17:40):
that hot and human cuisine. These people also brought a
knowledge and memories of a rice based cuisine, and so
it only makes sense then that the breads, the croquettes,
the waffles of that area would be based on rice
that was accessible. That's what they knew. And you see
(18:02):
other influences in rice, like in New Orleans, the claws
mot of a Caribbean and African influence into New Orleans cooking,
and I think it's just it's a very rich part
of the South. It's a it's a to read about
and to research it. It's a tragic part, you know,
(18:24):
of our history, but it has been an integral part
of Southern banking.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, I mean this is a through line with you know,
your other books about American cake and American cookies, where
you're very open about a lot of the things that
we have adopted and think like these are Americana recipes
are really ones that came from Africa during the slave trade,
which is right fascinating to think about, because I think
most people don't think about them that way unless they're
(18:52):
really looking for the history. So I'm grateful because it
makes us kind of reframe what all of that means. Well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
But at rice and cane both are important ingredients in
Southern banking, but they're you know, they have their dark history.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah. We have also talked a little bit on the
show before about enrichment programs, but I am ceaselessly fascinated.
So will you tell us a little bit from you know,
your expertise, what those what enrichment programs were when it
came to baking and why they happened.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And you're talking about the b vitamins and nios and yes,
I think it's yes. And because we had a corn
based diet in the South, and corn bread, you know,
corn wasn't we did not provide all of the nutrients
necessary and did not provide niisin in particular, and so
(19:45):
there was a lot of malnutrition and pelagra in the South.
And so it was sadly found most often in very
poor communities and in in the diets prisons, and yeah
and so, and have you done shows about this.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I'm sure it's come up. It has never been the
focal point, but I know we have talked about it
in you know, sort of the developmental stage and how
and when it happened.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right, And I can't remember exactly what year it was
that these studies took place, but they started to actually
some scientists started looking into, you know, the diet and
what was causing you know, these deficiencies. And I don't
think they pinpointed it until tragically they actually studied the
prison diets and gave the prisoners and one group, you know,
(20:35):
had had a more balanced diet and the other had
just the diet based on corn and that's where that's
where it was found.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
And then the federal government.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Got involved and in our grains in the US were
enriched and that was called the enrichment programs. Interestingly, now
that we've kind of gone swung back to some of
the old heirloom ground if you think about it, or
going instead of buying big flour that's been enriched, there
(21:06):
has been a trend in the last five years or
less in baking breads with locally grown flour or people
grinding their own wheat, grinding their own corn, and so
it is going to be unenriched. But I think that
our diet as a whole today is much more varied
than it used to be.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, we have access to anything we could dream of. Vitamins, yes,
and vitamins. I want to talk more about recipes. This
one is truly in service to my marriage because it's
my husband's very favorite thing and I actually had not
ever looked into it. Will you tell us about where
key lime pie came from and its origin because its
origin is actually also a little it's a little gray.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's a little gray, yes, And I think on that recipe, well,
we know key lime pie came from Flora, the Keys,
that's right, and from the Keys, and I think it
speaks to canned milk more than anything. So I think
you look at you look at the recipe, and that
kind of is an example of how I went about
sort of sleuthing and looking for the story behind these recipes,
(22:09):
is that you look at the recipe and what are
the key ingredients in that. Well, it's key lime, juice
and eggs and sweetened condensed milk, and so sweetened condensed
milk was an ingredient of the islands and the coasts
because you know that if you didn't have access to
fresh milk, you know, you use canned milk. And the
Keys were cut off from the rest of Florida for
(22:30):
a long time, and it wasn't until railroads came in,
and then with hurricanes coming into the Keys routinely through
the years, you knowes bridges would get washed out.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So they still do. They still do.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
This is right, Nothing much has changed, But I think
that that was a shelf stable recipe. But it is
that story, the story that's in here and I'm searching for.
It was the family and it was the man who
owned all of like the hardware stores, yeah did he
And he cornered the market on all the sweet and
condensed milk, right, And it was his cook who actually
(23:06):
and he owned three or four mansions.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Have you done stories on him?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
No, and think you kind of need to because there's uh, yeah,
there's I actually tracked down a chef historian in Florida.
It was David Bailey, I think is his name. And
then the then there was like an island the Keys,
longtime resident. This guy was named David Sloan and the
(23:33):
New York Times interviewed him, that's what it was, and
he talked about William Bill money Curry. That was the
name of the guy who made his fortune in stockpiling
sweetened condense milk. But it was his cook who's supposedly
made the first key LAMPI delicious cook.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
We love it the most. Okay, this is another selfish question,
a burn. Why did I have to be in my
fifties before I found out about Cantelope cream pie? Why
were you holding out on me? Well, Holly, I was
in my sixties when I found out. I don't you
ever been so excited to see a recipe of my life?
And not ever have heard of it before. I felt
(24:13):
the same way. I felt like it was a Christmas present. Yes, yes,
do you know what I mean? Yeah, because I love cantalope. Yes,
I love it too.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I love the Athena melons right like in July when
they come in season.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
All of it so sweet. And that was one of
those recipes.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
People asked me too, like how many times do you
test a recipe that goes in the cookbook And I'll say, well,
it depends on the recipe. Well, let me tell you this.
This recipe took about twelve times, but we were I
was insistent because I knew there was something here, right,
I knew.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I knew what this pie was going to taste like.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was going to taste like cantalope, and it was
going to have this big meringue on it. But it
was you have to have enough juice that goes into
the custard that you stir on the top of the
stove for the filling, and so you really need need
to use a really ripe cantalope. And that's the story
behind the spot this pie is it is it talks
(25:07):
to us about railroads and what railroads brought to the South,
and they brought ingredients because you could be living in nowhere, Alabama,
and all of a sudden you could get access to
cantalopes that maybe had come in from East Texas and
it was because of the railroads. And then the railroad
(25:28):
cars would also have access. And some of the trains
that had the passenger trains that had dining in them,
these there were cooks on board, and the cooks would
actually use ingredients that they had picked up at the
last stop. And this canalope pie story is one of
a cook who had a surplus of ripe canalopes and
(25:51):
there's only so much he could cut up for breakfast
and needed to use it up. And it was not
only he felt like he needed to use up and
he didn't want it to go to waste, but they
are actually his job sort of depended on it, and
he needed to show his bosses that he had the ability.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You talk about the ultimate mystery bass right right? Make
a pie with this? Yeah, whatever we picked up at
the last one. Yeah, listen, I'll make cantalope things all
the time. You love it. Cantalope syrup is one of
my favorite things to me for a cocktail. It's so good.
Yeuh oh. A collins made with candilope syrup is like
summer to me. Nice yes, And then your leftover cantilope
(26:30):
from it is like a compot you can spread on
whatever toast cantalope everything. My husband is allergic, too bad.
I will eat all the cantalope. Are there any recipes
(26:52):
I haven't hit on that you want to talk about
because you love them so much or think they're especially
important parts of this story? Wow?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Well we've talked a bunch of pie. That's so interesting.
Pie has come up, you know. I do love the
pudding chapter, I think, And someone has said, you know,
I think this is the first cookbook I pulled out
and you have an entire chapter dedicated to pudding. And
I do putting you think is British, you know, and
the whole category of desserts is called pudding, you know,
(27:21):
for the Brits. But I'm talking about the soft and creamy,
comforty set.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
And so that's what I've got.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So it's a mixture of banana pudding, which is probably
the South's number one dessert, and bananas. That is also
a railroad recipe. Banana's coming up from Mobile in New
Orleans into the rest of the country. But also rice pudding,
which is old old that's I've got an old Maryland recipe,
and that recipe came out of an old cookbook that
(27:48):
was written after the Civil War, which then informed me
how a lot of the first cookbooks in the South
were written as charitable cookbooks and it was written as
relief for and they unknowingly have preserved the recipes of
the South, the nineteenth century recipes, because they wrote them down.
(28:11):
And I think we were talking earlier about how not
all cultures, not all the people that came into the
South wrote down recipes. There are a lot of them.
The English and the Scottish and the Irish, you know,
they were all talk you know, storytellers. They didn't write
things down. The German cooks that came into the South
(28:31):
through them in West and down through you know, Kentucky, Tennessee,
they wrote things down. The Jewish cooks you know that
came into the South through Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, they
wrote things down, and they also remembered them, and they
repeated recipes during the holidays. So I think that those
early cookbooks helped preserve the recipes and a lot of
(28:54):
the pudding recipes come out of those early books.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I love it. You also share a recipe that is
your mom's recipe. Oh I do well. You talk about
that a lot. Yeah, we actually I think there's two.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
There's the chest cake and then HER's her banana bread
as well.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Banana bread.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, banana bread is because that's our personal favorite. That
was just how do I get this banana bread recipe
in the book? And it goes into quick bread chapter.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's a great banana bread recipe. It's real easy to do,
and it's oil not you know, butter. I think it
makes a fuller flavored banana bread. And then there's a
chestcake recipe in the cake chapter, and that's the it's
like a bar, it's like a blondie, but it's We
call it chest cake in Middle Tennessee because it has
the gooey consistency of like a chest pie.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Gotcha. That one caught my eye because it just looked
really the photography in this book, thank you, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Red Allen out of Atlanta, I mean Athens, Georgia was
a photography.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
It's beautiful. Yeah, she's quite talented. Fact like everything looks
really buttery and delicious. It was buttery. It's a mouth
watering set of pictures for sure, thank you. And as
I said, it's a tone. That's a lot of work. Yeah,
it's two hundred recipes boring behind the veil. Question about
that when you're doing photography for one of your books,
(30:16):
especially in like this, are those situations where you are
churning out those recipes and dressing them for photography or
do you have a bunch of helpers? Is it you
and the photographer? How does that work? Well?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
It was both this time because we had two weeks
of photoshoots.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
That's not enough. There are a million recipes in here, correct, Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And the first week we had a fabulous stylist, Tammy
Hardiman and hers assistant, Angela Hinkel. They were fantastic. So
let me tell you. The first week we did every
complicated recipe in a book because I needed them. We
did all most of the pause because Angela was just
fluting and crafting the crust and Tammy did all the
(31:00):
flourishes on top. But I also was in the kitchens
during custard and making things. The next week they went
by BA and it was me and so that we.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Did all the biscuits and the corn bread.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So I did. It's my hands that are in the
book rolling the biscuit dough. So I think it's a
little bit of both. We had some mishaps. You're going
to the oven in the studio, I had a hot
spoted and on the left hand side, that beautiful pecan
piw recipes Zephyr Wrights pecan piwer recipe got sort of
(31:35):
torched on the left hand corner. Oh, and it was
so gorgeous. So you know, what do you do?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You crop it three quarters and grape a beautiful flower
over it. Exactly these things anything can be fixed, right,
and you would never know because the photograph does look
absolutely gorgeous. Thank you. My last question, I think I've
asked you this every time we've done one of these,
and this one is a long haul book. You took
a long time writing this, and as I said, you
(32:02):
talked to what appears to be one million people. What
was your biggest surprise along the way, because it is
such an incredibly rich I.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Mean, well, I think back to the fact that the
South is much more diverse, or the food, the baking
from the South, is way more diverse than I ever
ever imagined. The other takeaway was that I, being a
native Southerner, have have just warm and fuzzy feelings about
all of these recipes. Right When I look at a
(32:34):
meringue pie, I think I'm a mother. When I look
at a pound cake, I think I'm a grandmother. When
I look at at spoon bread, which is like a
corn souflet, I think of the other grandmother and so.
But what I learned is that not everybody has those
same feelings. And that was part of the story that
I wanted to tell, that much of Southern baking has
been done by people who were not baking out of joy,
(32:56):
and they were baking because they were forced to. Were
baking in in black cooks, who were baking in other
women's kitchen, white women's kitchen, and then they had to
go home and bake and cook for their own family
and raise their own children. And I always knew these things,
but I don't think it really hit home for me
(33:18):
that not everything that I consider joyful and comforting other
people feel the same way, right, And I honor that.
I do honor that, But there's got to be recipes
that they do find joyful. And I found that poundcakes
to the back black community, especially tea cakes are held
(33:40):
in very hostained peach cobbler. Yes, so that we're all
I've learned that, you know, we're all different, we can
all have you know, memories, we can all collectively come
together and appreciate a style of baking from a region
that may not be anything like we imagine it is,
(34:03):
and that we're probably more alike than we are different.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, oh, I love it. Thank you for being here
with me, but also thank you for this book. I
feel like this is the book I didn't know I
really really wanted, like it's it's like a Christmas gift
for it to exist. So for all of my historical bakers,
there's you need it, just trust I Literally, I'm staring
at the page for the New Orleans kincake recipeing, going, well,
(34:29):
I can make that in September. That's not right, you
can start now for January. Thank you so much, Anne,
Thank you, Hollyes Oh the best, the best. Thank you
once more to Anne Burn for her wonderful stories and
baking advice. The new book once Again is Baking in
the American South, two hundred recipes and they're untold stories
(34:51):
and that's available anywhere books are sold. And you can
also find Anne at annburn dot com that is a
N N E B y r N and on Instagram
at Anburn and on Twitter at Anneburn. Sign up for
her newsletter It's so good. Since we have baking talk,
(35:12):
I thought it would be fun for listener mail to
do one from one of our listeners who said it
was silly, but it was also really quite charming to me. Okay,
this is from our listener Sarah, and she writes, you say,
you're not picky about what mail we send you, so
I thought i'd send you this little thing that made
me smile. I'd ordered from Too Good to Go, an
(35:35):
app that sells discounted mystery bags from local restaurants of
food that would otherwise have to be thrown out the
next day, I paid six ninety nine to see what
Whole Foods would give me. On a Friday night after
a long week, it was about a twenty minute drive
from the train station after work, so I was catching
up on Wednesday's episode that would have been our episode
on Carvio Montero, and Sarah continues, When I opened my bag,
(35:59):
what was the first thing I pulled out. Portuguese rolls, fluffy,
soft carbs, and a funny coincidence. Now that's a great
way to start a weekend. In case you're curious, the
bag also has mini chocolate hazelnut beignets, a large chibbatta loaf,
and some cherry turnovers. Definitely worth the price of admission.
I hope you have a great weekend. That is very cool,
and I like that this is eliminating food waste. Yeah.
(36:22):
I know some bakeries and restaurants will turn over their
stuff to shelters, yeah, or food banks. But yeah, some
municipalities don't let you do that. Sometimes based on ingredients,
you're not allowed to do that. I think.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, we have a food rescue group here where I
live that does sort of a loop of grocery stores
and restaurants and stuff and picks up a lot of
food that would otherwise be discarded and then takes it
to shelters where they have grab and go meals and
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, which also harkens back to a previous episode on
a Gusta Scoffier, because as far as we could tell,
he was the first chef that actually started tradition. So, Sarah,
thank you for sharing your delicious picture of roles with us. Man.
I love a carb. Yeah they don't almost love me back,
but I love them. If you would like to write
(37:12):
to us to share whatever you're eating, or your pets,
or just things you think about history, you can do
so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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