Sweet Home Alabama
Lane Cake, Fried Green Tomatoes, Alabama White Sauce and more!
One of my favorite things about traveling is obviously eating, but more than just finding the local hot spots or fine dining places, I want to know the history of the food, and the must try local delicacies and dishes. So I wanted to start doing features on each state. I’m going to go alphabetically, which means we are starting off in Alabama.
As some of you may know, I was born in the South and grew up on Southern cooking. Most of my comfort foods are Southern classics and Alabama staples definitely hit on some of the dishes I grew up eating.
Like many Southern States, Alabama’s culinary staples include classics like Fried Chicken, fried catfish, boiled peanuts and sweet tea, as well as barbecue, primarily pulled pork and a sauce that we’ll get into later. Desserts include more Southern staples like pecan pie, banana pudding and moonpies. I’m going to dive into five culinary creations that we owe to the Yellowhammer State.
Lane Cake
Although pecan pie is an Alabama classic, it’s popular all over the South, and I wanted to find a truly Alabaman dessert. Plus many states claim Pecan Pie as their creation. Luckily, Alabama has one that is documented to be born and bred there, Clayton, Alabama to be exact. The original Lane Cake recipe was featured in Emma Rylander Lane's self-published cookbook, "Some Good Things to Eat," in 1898. The recipe became famous after the cake won the top prize at a Columbus, Ga. county fair, and it quickly became the cue to make on a special occasion.
So what is I? It’s layer cake consisting of fluffy white chiffon and a boozy filling, sometimes a frosting. Like most good things that have been around forever, eveyone puts their own spin on it to some extent, adding coconut, pecans, various types of booze and yes, the much dreaded raisins.Some people cover the whole thing with a classic 7 minute frosting while others serve it ‘naked.’ Love of Lane Cake even seeped over into the other states and was famously loved by Georgia’s own Jimmy Carter who wrote fondly about the cake being a Christmas staple in his memoir, Christmas in Plains.
Of course it also makes an appearance in Alabama native, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout reports getting a little sauced off the cake, saying "Miss Maudie baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight", and another Lane Cake is made in the book by Miss Maude.
In May 2016, Lane Cake was voted the official state cake of Alabama
Here are two recipes, one frosted one not! If you hate raisins add more pecans or another dried fruit like cherries.
Get the non-frosted recipe here!
Fried Green Tomatoes
Although fried green tomatoes have been around since the late 1800s, and surged in popularity throughout the 1900s, by the late 1900s they had become a retro recipe, one people had heard of but no one was really making anymore. Partially this has to do with availability, if you didn't have your own garden where the hell are you getting green tomatoes from? I’m talking actual unripe tomatoes not the green heirloom variety.
Enter the fictional Whistle Stop Cafe from the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg. The cafe was based on Fannie Flagg’s great aunt’s real life spot called the Irondale Cafe, outside of Birmingham, The cafe was still in business making their iconic dish, when the movie version of the novel dropped in 1993. It wasn't;t long before they were frying up 60-70 pounds of tomatoes per week.
Soon restaurants across the country jumped in on the trend and a relic from the past became a legitimate food trend. And it’s not surprising since the most basic form of this dish is an incredible jumping off point for numerous spins offs. Unlike most flash in the pan food trends, this one is still standing today.
Alabama White BBQ Sauce
Look, I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too, but we are not going to be little perverts. We are going to talk about this sauce on it’s merits!
When you think BBQ Sauce most of us picture the dark red of a tomato based sauce, vinegary, sweet and smokey. Or you might think of the spicesy vinegar heavy sauce popular in North Carolina. Only Alabamans and now some surrounding states think creamy and white.
This mayo based sauce was invented by Robert Gibson to serve with smoked chicken served at Big Bob Gibson BBQ in Decatur, Alabama, He wanted a more fat based sauce to keep drier cuts of meat moist. The sauce took off and put Bob’s BBQ on the map in a major way.
Although you can buy the sauce at stores on Alabama, it’s super easy to make, basically consisting of mayo, apple cider vinegar, garlic, horseradish, Worcestershire, and black and cayenne peppers.
Although traditionally served with chicken and turkey, it’s now used on pulled pork as well.
Conecoh Sausage
Not really a recipe but a very famous Alabaman food, the Conecoh Sausage.
Alabama’s favorite sausage is used in numerous ways, heated up with eggs for breakfast, chopped up and added to soups and stews to add flavor, or just char out up in a skillet and serve alongside some crispy potatoes.
This smoky sausage came to us back in 1947 courtesy of the Sessions family in Evergreen Alabama, and was one only available in state, but can now be purchased across the country via mail order or sometimes you might be lucky enough to spy some at Walmart, Sam’s Club, or Costco.
Much like fried green tomatoes, the down home sausage has been a favorite ingredient of some famous chefs, including Atlanta’s Kevin Gillespie, who uses them in his version of pigs in a blanket.
James Beard award-winning chef Chris Hastings pays tribute with his Chicken and Conecuh Sausage Gumbo a recipe from his cookbook “Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook.”
I’m kind of dying to try it.
Check out the Conecoh Sausage website for ordering and recipes!
Banana Pudding
I wasn't going to originally include banana pudding in this entry because I was kind of thinking Alabama does not own this classic, but after researching it I realized that Alabama is in fact partially responsible for the popularity of this god-tier dessert. In particular the ports of Mobile, who were instrumental in bringing bananas into the states on a level that made them affordable to the masses.
Now there are hints of banana pudding sightings in old newspapers including ones as far north as Massachusetts, but the ones I saw are NOT what we think of when we think of banana pudding today.
When massive amounts of bananas began arriving in Mobile, many people started incorporating them in many existing southern staple recipe including pudding. Basically a twist on a trifle, it was the perfect way to not only use this new exotic and healthy fruit but day old cake as well.
Women’s magazines and newspapers were quickly filled with everyone’s version of the dessert, and in 1929, Nabisco got in on the trend launching Nilla Wafers. The rest, as they say, is history.
I grew up eating this and pretty much just had the boxed pudding variety which is GOOD, but Homemade is just a little extra good.
See you next time for Alaska! I’m already scared of Moose Stew.