BLACK BOTTOM PIE

Instead of or as well as Pumpkin

It is wondrous how a man focuses his mind when he is being flogged.

Said Jonathan Swift, Irish author of Gulliver’s Travels and several other satirical texts pillaring contemporary social behaviors. As you read, your mind goes off in one direction and then is yanked back by the word “flogged,” it being the last one, or near to it, that you expect to read. 

You would expect something to do with sex, food or religion.

So let’s stick to food, since floggin’ can hardly be held PC even in the most forward cultures. 

I believe that people who eat fats are happy. Fats have been brought together in many wonderful ways, but hardly ever so happily as in BLACK BOTTOM PIE.

In the superb Cross Creek Cookery by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, better known as author of The Yearling. In the first chapter, “To Our Bodies’ Good,” she tells of a letter from a young aviator cadet who said that Cross Creek “should be banned in or near any encampment” of the armed forces “in order to preserve discipline.” Because the poor boys were miserable without the delicious food of Cross Creek which, when it specifies cream and butter, indicates “so generous a quantity, so high a quality, that one’s own Jersey cow is called for.’’

I could not agree more. 

Whenever I go back to France, I have to eat the Normandy butter. In England, it’s Jersey cream, let alone Devon clotted, and I buy a half pint, and can’t wait to lift a spoon. 

BBP is by far “the most delicious pie I have ever eaten,” says Rawlings. “It is a pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion.”

But not before she said “Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish.”

Find the recipe in Jim Villas’ My Mother’s Southern Desserts, in Cross Creek Cookery, or here.

On November 5^th, 2024, author Kimberly Holland, in the magazine Southern Living, listed 31 chocolate pies. Some of which are:

Over the Moon Chocolate Pie

Chocolate Silk Pie

Mississippi Mud Pie

Chocolate Gravy Pie

Kentucky Bourbon Pie

Photo Courtesy of Antonis Achilleos

Fudge Pie

Texas Trash Pie

Chocolate Pudding Pie

Chocolate-Bourbon Pecan Pie

And the super gooey “Mississippi Mud S'Mores-Fudge Pie.”

Photo Courtesy of Becky Luigart-Sta

But of them all (apart from chocolate Pecan Pie) I love Black Bottom Pie.

Black Bottom Pie

Martha Stewart gives the recipe on https://www.marthastewart.com/356050/black-bottom-pie.

It’s a layer of chocolate pudding on top of a Graham cracker crust then topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with grated chocolate.

Wikipedia says the name of the pie could be because of the dark and swampy lowlands along the Mississippi river. Or that it had its origin in Louisiana in the early 1940’s. “Its invention has been claimed by Monroe Boston Strause of Los Angeles. Strause, who was known as the "Pie King", was the inventor of the chiffon pie and the Graham Cracker crust.^”

The great Chares Perry, late of the Los Angeles Times, gives this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups (270 ml) milk

¾ cup (150 gr) sugar

3 egg yolks

¾ cup (90gr) unsweetened cocoa

1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin soaked in ¼ cup (50 ml) milk

2 cups (500 ml) heavy cream, divided

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

1 (9-inch) graham cracker pie crust

2 tablespoons grated chocolate for garnish

Scald the milk in a saucepan.

Stir together the sugar and egg yolks in a bowl until smooth. Mix a little of the hot milk with the eggs, then stir the mixture into the milk.

Sift the cocoa into a bowl. Add a little of the hot milk mixture and stir, then add the cocoa mixture to the milk mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the liquid coats the back of a wooden spoon, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Remove from heat. Stir the gelatin into the hot custard. Place the pan over a bowl of ice. Chill, stirring occasionally, until the custard forms a mound when dropped from a spoon.

Whip 1 cup cream until it forms stiff peaks. Fold into the custard.

Fill the pie crust with the custard mixture and refrigerate until set, several hours or overnight.

In a small bowl, whip the remaining 1 cup cream. Stir in the powdered sugar. Spread evenly over the filling and sprinkle with grated chocolate.

After which richness a freshener is needed.

Meyer Lemon & Vodka Ice

3 cups (750 ml) warm water

1 cup (200 gr) superfine sugar

2 cups (300 ml) lemon juice

1/2 cup (75 ml) plain vodka

Mix it all together until the sugar is dissolved, then put the mixture in a stainless-steel bread loaf type of pan, then put the pan in the freezer. Just before you serve it mash it up with a fork. You don’t need a machine to make this glorious ice, and the consistency is much less icy than a granita.

Or

Since it is the season again to celebrate fabulous pears, and for this recipe using Red Bartletts. “These bronze beauties have a crisp, woodsy, honey-sweet flavor. Their firm, dense flesh makes them ideal for poaching.”

Pear, Pear, Pear

Once this devastatingly good dish is prepared in advance it takes 5 minutes to dish out and serve. The best white pear brandy that I know of is from Etter in Switzerland, but almost any brand will do, often called “Poire Williams.”

I owe this recipe idea to Claude Troisgros and to La Coupole in Paris. I never missed there (Coupole) the green apple sorbet doused in Calvados. I love all the white fruit alcohols or ‘brandies,’ but cannot take them straight after lunch or dinner since they burn a hole in my stomach. With this dish of pear ice, pears, and white pear brandy, I can have an after dinner digestif without the burning.

Or try poaching the pears in Muscat wine and serving them with cardamom-flavored ricotta (1 teaspoon ground cardamom per cup of ricotta). At an AMFAR benefit in Napa Valley in 1998, I served these pears with creamed blue cheese in the center of the plate, some chestnut honey poured over the cheese, and a Black Muscat grape sorbet on top of that.

Serves 4

2 ripe pears, peeled, peelings saved

½ cup (75 ml) light sugar syrup

½ cup (75 ml) finest white pear brandy

1 pint pear sorbet (your own or buy it)

Pinch salt

¼ cup petals (1 medium ) pink rose, shredded

Put the peelings in the syrup and simmer in a small nonreactive saucepan for 20 minutes. Strain into a bowl, discard the peelings, and chill the syrup.

Cut the pears in half lengthwise, remove the cores and stems, and slice then 1/8-inch thick along the length of the halves. (Or you can leave them whole as in the photograph above). Mix in 2 tablespoons of the pear brandy and the salt into the chilled syrup. Add the pear slices, cover, and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Put a scoop of the sorbet in the center of four chilled, shallow, soup plates. Spoon the pear slices around and pour the remaining brandy over the pears. 

Garnish with the rose petals.

Many thanks for reading “Jeremiah Tower’s Out of the Oven.”

Your choice of my personal archives of my career as a chef at Chez Panisse, Stars San Francisco as well in Hong Kong, France, Italy, Australia, and Hong Kong. Accounts of cooking all over the world, for the most modest to the most famous like James Beard and Julia Child.  

For $5 a month or $50 a year, you will receive weekly publications that include photos, menus, recipes, and videos of me cooking. Forty years of past ones like, “Chicken with Julia Child”, a film with Anthony Bourdain, the Pebble Beach Food & Wine festivals, and future events like the 2025 F&W in Ojai.