Baked Fruit Casserole

HOT FRUIT CASSEROLES HAVE BEEN SERVED AT breakfasts, luncheons, and as a side dish on lavish buffets throughout the South ever since canned fruits acquired a certain cachet in the 1920s. They can contain any number of fruits (I once counted eight at a country club luncheon in Nashville), be enhanced with everything from curry […]

Georgia Bereavement Casserole

AT NO OCCASION IN THE SOUTH IS THE ART OF casserole baking more evident than at the bereavements following funerals, which are, quite frankly, as social as they are solemn. It’s not unusual, in fact, to see at least half a dozen casseroles (savory and sweet) contributed to a bereavement table by relatives and friends, […]

Spoonbread

SPOONBREAD IS, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE LIGHTEST, richest, and most elegant of all Southern cornmeal dishes, a custardlike, versatile miracle that approaches the texture of a soufflé and is as appropriate at breakfast with fried country ham and red-eye gravy as on the grandest dinner table or buffet. Of course, Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and […]

Southern Mac ’n’ Cheese

ANYBODY WHO DOUBTS THAT MACARONI AND CHEESE has a Southern pedigree need only be directed to any cafeteria from Virginia to Alabama to observe the heaping spoonfuls being plopped on virtually every plate that passes down the line. History has not recorded whether this was the dish Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he sent […]

Chicken Spaghetti

I HAVE SEEN AND HEARD ABOUT OTHER SOUTHERN recipes for chicken spaghetti, but Craig Claiborne always swore that the dish was created by his mother and talked about up and down the Mississippi Delta. The elaborate preparation was his pride and joy, and there can be no doubt that it is a masterpiece of Southern […]

Chicken Tetrazzini

THERE ARE SOME (MAINLY IN SAN FRANCISCO) WHO refute the claim that this rich, creamy casserole was created in Charleston, South Carolina, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century for the famous coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, but whatever the dish’s regional origin, it has come down as one of the South’s most classic and […]

Creole Curried Shrimp and Mirliton Casserole

CHAYOTE, A GOURDLIKE, PALE GREEN, DELECTABLE fruit about the size and shape of a large, scraggly pear, is called mirliton in Louisiana, where, as in Florida, it flourishes and is much loved. Over the years in New Orleans and around Cajun country, I’ve eaten mirliton fried, stuffed with seafood, and incorporated into salads, but since […]

Hominy Mushroom and Cheddar Casserole

EVER SINCE THE ORIGINAL SETTLERS OF JAMESTOWN, Virginia, were greeted by Indians in 1607 with bowls of softened maize with salt and hog fat (“rockahomini”), there’s been confusion even in the South over the difference between hominy and grits. In short, hominy is whole, dried corn kernels soaked in water and lye to remove the […]

Rutabaga Sweet Potato and Orange Casserole

THOUGHT TO BE A CROSS BETWEEN A CABBAGE AND A globe turnip, the smooth, heavy, pale yellow rutabaga has been a popular root vegetable in the South since it migrated from Europe with the early settlers in the seventeenth century. Small, relatively tender, and slightly sweet rutabagas can be boiled and mashed or simply cut […]

Sausage and Vidalia Onion Casserole

THE STORY GOES THAT WHEN A TOOMBS COUNTY, Georgia, farmer named Moses Coleman planted some Bermuda onion seeds in the sandy loam around Vidalia in the spring of 1931, the onions he harvested were not just mild in aroma but “sweet as Coca-Cola.” The reason, it was later discovered, was the low sulfur content of […]