So just how is the raisin "Southern" in regards to our regional food identity? Honestly, I've had to dig a bit, and even then was forced to speculate to some degree. I at first thought the raisin may have become welcomed into the local larder during the Depression as a storable & cheap sweet, but soon found that hypothesis to be pretty much wrinkled as the raisin itself. My momma, in fact, while a child of the Depression, got me on the road winding a little farther back than her first memories.
Her momma, my grandmother, Miss Annie, was the devotee of the raisin pie in these parts. Now I'll admit, I was somewhat squeamish about them when I was little. They are, in nature, a tad gelatinous for the palate of most young children, but fresh from the oven, if afforded a good taste with a blind eye, a raisin pie can win over even the pickiest of toddlers. That intense grape sweetness carried to the tongue in that creamy silky filling is pretty unforgettable. I can taste Grandma's raisin pie right now, all these many years later.
Neysa Jo's (that's my sweet wife) aunt really got me on this food quest. I don't know what sparked her interest, but not long ago, out of the blue, she asked if my mother had a recipe. I "assumed" as much, since it was our family version of mincemeat, so I asked. I should have remembered that I didn't remember my mother ever making them, and my grandmother, known for her collection of clippings and penciled notes, didn't always write down her favorite stand-by desserts. Such was the case for raisin pie. No recipe. Well, nothing I could copy, but....she could, if I wanted, tell me pretty much how to make one.
What followed was a dictated recipe in detail, to the point I though she was reading it. No. There was no script. Just a memory of standing beside her mother in the kitchen, as I'd done with both those ladies, seeing the process instead of reading a printed recipe. Like the memory of a taste or a smell, it lingered.
Now Aunt Carolyn was satisfied, but I was curious about this pie I'd nearly forgotten about, as I sure didn't see it on anybody's table in recent times. I wondered if it was common in Kentucky, or if it had migrated here when Miss Annie was a young housewife. The full answer I'm still working on, but Mother's recitation was soon countered in a fashion that left even me speechless (for a little while). Seeking comparable recipes, it wasn't long before I found not just a similar pie, but rather it was as if my mother HAD been reading off a published recipe, only it was from a 1906 cookbook entitled How We Cook in Tennessee!
Do understand, Miss Annie had the proud cooking heritage of a maternal line stretching back to Colonial Virginia, but a paternal ancestry right out of Middle Tennessee. What my mother so clearly remembered was mirrored almost word for word and ingredient for ingredient in this Jackson, TN compilation of Tennessee favorites printed when her mother was but 2 years old. It made sense, growing up in "Pinch-Um" in Taylor County, Kentucky, that Miss Annie was taught how to make raisin pie by her Grandma Poteet in a tradition brought up from the Volunteer State into south central Kentucky where so many Tennesseans had settled.
The simplicity of this recipe brings one an overwhelming sense of "duh." My 9 year daughter Augusta could make a raisin pie. In short, it requires a cup to 2 cups of raisins (based upon individual taste, whether you want a dense pie or a lighter, creamier one), a cup of sugar (many cooks early on recommended brown sugar), two cups of water, a tablespoon of corn starch, and a pinch of salt and zest of lemon (1/2 of a lemon at most) and a tablespoon of vinegar (optional). Boil for 15 minutes or until adequately thick. Spoon into your crust and cover with lattice crust, baking until crust is done. So simple, so delicious.
Afterward, I found yet another, earlier reference to the pastry in the South's food history. New York born but married to a Kentuckian, the former female newspaper editor and recipe collector Frances Emugene Johnston Owens had authored Mrs. Owens' Cook Book and Useful Household Hints, self-published simultaneously in both Little Rock, Arkansas and Louisville, Kentucky in 1884. In it were offered two versions of raisin pie. I especially like the simplicity of the first, by Mrs. E. B. Baldwin, which read, "One cup raisins- seeded. Stew until soft. Thicken with flour, like gravy. Sweeten to taste and bake with two crusts." The next version, more complex, was provided by Mrs. M. M. Jones of, not too surprisingly, Nashville, Tennessee!
Frances Owens warrants further mention. A fascinating and vital career was cut short when she and her daughter, Amy, were tragically killed along with over 600 others in the infamous 1903 Chicago Iroquois Theater fire. Frances Johnston had been born in Sidney, New York in 1843, but married William Lawson Hathaway Owens of Maysville in Mason County, Kentucky, whose parents eventually settled in Louisville. He being a printer by trade, the couple went on to establish a newspaper in the Dakota Territory before moving to Chicago where she converted her life-long collection of recipes into an important late Victorian cookbook which clearly resonated with Southern readers. Her relationship with Mrs. Jones in Tennessee is undetermined, but Frances credited this lady with two other recipes in her book.
OK, so raisin pie is from Tennessee! Go Rocky Top! Uh, not so fast. Raisins are from southern California, remember? Definitely NOT south of the Mason-Dixon line, though, come to think of it, grapes were grown here long before they were on the west coast, but that's a blog for another day. Any way, surely Tennessee never claimed the raisin as it's own little dried fruit, did it? But then again, bananas are associated with far western Kentucky and the town of Fulton, because that was where the bananas that had been unloaded at New Orleans were iced and loaded again for shipment to Chicago, so stranger food geographies are known in the South. But raisins from California to Tennessee?
Truth is, raisin pie may have no true Southern origins. Like many foods, this one seems to have its roots in Pennsylvania but eventually made a Southern migration. We know it was popular in America by the 1860s with no specific regional association, but by the 1930s, once California growers were making raisins plentiful & accessible to consumers across the country, the pie was a favorite even in the deep South. For no good, recorded reasons, raisin pie just especially satisfied the sweet tooth of Tennesseans as the 19th century faded into the 20th. This popularity was certainly aided by the effective marketing of the Sun-Maid company, who included the recipe for raisin pie on the packages of their California-grown raisins per the Sun-Maid Herald Vol. I & No. 1 for 1915. In this early trade publication, we read that, "10,000 small cards were prepared for exclusive pie bakers, calling attention to the goodness of Sun-Maid raisin pie, and these are being sent out as called for....Small cards in two colors, for restaurant use in popularizing Sun-Maid raisin pie are being distributed by the largest pie bakers of the country, nearly all of whom are now baking raisin pie with steadily increasing demand for this product."
A Sun-Maid Recipe Advertisement Featuring Raisin Pie, ca. 1920
Thus clever and efficient marketing created an American appetite, not just a Southern one, for raisin pie by the time of the 1st World War. According to the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Tennessee tradition of professionally baked raisin pies is carried on today by Seaver's Bakery of Johnson City in East TN, very likely as a direct result of Sun-Maid's success in promoting its product. But surely, as my mother and my grandmother and the good ladies of First Baptist, Jackson, Tennessee back in 1906 verified for us, Tennesseans, and Southerners in general, discovered a love of raisin pie that we continue to this day.
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