Chef and author Scott Peacock joins host Kristen Miglore to talk about his very favorite cookie from childhood, the deep connections that happen over biscuits, his sister's mastery of the half batch, and what it was like to lunch and write with Ms. Lewis daily.
Special thanks to listeners Shiyam (@foodnflavors), Keshia (@keshia.kan) and Jess (@sodiumgirl) for the truly sweetest cookie stories.
Referenced in this episode:
Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
May your holidays be full of puzzles and cozy beverages and—of course—cookies. Next week: the most genius thing you cooked all year; tell me yours at genius@food52.com.
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi. I'm Kristen Miglore, lifelong genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. On The Genius Recipe Tapes, we go behind the scenes with the geniuses themselves and we get to hear from you.
My guest this week is chef Scott Peacock, founder of a very one of a kind biscuit experience in Marion, Alabama, and longtime friend, collaborator, and housemate of the legendary chef Edna Lewis. I recorded this conversation with Scott back in July about the most nostalgic cookie from his childhood, which is a five minute, chocolatey no-bake number that he grew up calling boiled peanut butter cookies. And at the end of the episode, we'll get to hear about some of your favorite childhood cookies, too.
But first I wanted to quickly tell you about mine. They're called coconut classics or coconut classies, depending on whether you asked my mom or my aunt, which is all a little bit strange because they came from the same source. I think we can chalk it up to a glitch on a handwritten recipe card, you know, C’s could look a lot like E’s, but forever on my side of the family, they will be coconut classics, whether that C was originally an E or not.
They're a simple, soft, buttery, slightly chewy cookie that is riddled with sweetened shredded coconut. And importantly, my mom could roll unlimited tubes of them to tuck away in the freezer so that she could slice and make them anytime she needed a batch through the holidays. All that she had to do was brush the cookies with a little egg wash before baking to shine them up and decorate each one with a single pecan half to make them look very classy and also very classic.
When I first tasted Scott’s boiled peanut butter cookies, I felt like I knew them, too. The first thing my husband said was, when have we had these? And you might remember them as well, because I found that there are millions of variations out there online, with some people calling them names like preacher cookies or cow pies or poochies.
As you'll hear in the interview, though, Scott’s lifelong reverence for these cookies and his curiosity as a chef has led him to an especially deep understanding of how to make them just how you like them and love them however they turn out. We also talked about what it was like to write and cook every day with his mentor, Edna Lewis, who he always calls Miss Lewis on the cookbook they worked on for a decade, The Gift of Southern Cooking. And how Miss Lewis taught Scott to see Southern food and himself differently. But first Scott took us to his mother's kitchen when he was five years old.
Hi, Scott.
Scott Peacock: Hello, Kristen.
Kristen: You have said that this is your favorite cookie from childhood. Is that correct?
Scott: Absolutely. Yes, unquestionably. I feel myself blushing just thinking about that. I just got a little bit of a sugar high.
Kristen: Can you tell us about this recipe, the story behind it?
Scott: I remember them from really early and I only know that because we moved when I was six years old. But I have a clear memory of my mother making them in the house little before I was six, and I just remember the buttered aluminum foil on the kitchen counter, and she would make them and spoon them out. The whole thing, watching all of it, and they were all very familiar ingredients, even to a five-year-old. And she would make them. And with my sister and I would both, who's three years older than I am, we would both be standing there crowded around the stove or still the counter watching her, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then when she spooned them out, it was this interminable wait, it seemed like for them to set. But then occasionally she would let us take a spoon, and give us one that wasn't quite set. But you had to be careful because you were a child and you could burn yourself. In general, they didn't last all that long because we were so greedy with them.
And then we moved when I was six, where Aunt Noona lived, or where we called her “Aint Noona”. She was the supreme boiled cookie maker. Her cookies were the very best. They always set, they were always the same, they were always perfect. That and her peanut brittle, extraordinary. Oh my God, the peanut brittle. And then she taught my sister how to make them. And my sister was never very interested in cooking, but Janet learned to make them and make them by heart. She became the master of the half batch because she only liked him when they were still warm. She didn't like him once they were set and cold. I honestly don't know the exact origin of the recipe, but I do feel confident that it was one of those convenient recipes. When we started getting recipes that had a can of this and a package of this and that test kitchens were developing. My best guess is that it probably emerged sometime in the 1950s. I have tried making them with better peanut butter and with fancy cocoa, raw sugar, etcetera. But to me, they did not have a childhood nostalgic factor, which is considerable for me. I would consider it a real character flaw if someone didn't like them in general. I think it's a pretty good litmus test.
Kristen: As for the set-ness of them, sometimes they set, sometimes they don't. For you, is there an ideal texture once they do set, or are you pretty happy no matter what?
Scott: I would probably rather have them under than over. But even when they're that soft, glossy, sort of pliable stage. If they make it through the night, they do continue to set, I think, even just by virtue of the evaporation, to some degree. You would definitely want women to cool 1000% before you would put them into any sort of container.
Kristen: And even if you go over, I was thinking with the last one that I was making that were kind of crumbly, that they would be really good sprinkled on ice cream.
Scott: That's what I was thinking, that's exactly what I was thinking. I think that would be terrific in ice cream. And usually, there are some crumbs that come behind anyway when you start peeling them up or cleaning out the pot itself. If I wasn't to get everything, I'm usually not., you just wait for that to cool completely and then take a spoon and scrape every last bit out and that's pretty delicious, even just from the spoon. But over ice cream would be terrific. For me, because it is such a nostalgic creature, there's a little bit of time travel to it. Especially when it's in that commercial peanut butter, commercial mainstream cocoa resonates in a very, very powerful way for me.
Kristen: I think other people making it will feel similarly. Obviously, your memories are very connected to the time travel that you're doing. But the first bite that I had and also the first bite that my husband had, the first thing my husband said was when have we had these? And that was similar to like, I know this flavor.
Somewhere in my childhood either like my family made them or I had the bake sales or something. Or it also took me back a little bit to being in junior high and a friend introducing me to Muddy Buddies. They are also called other names, Puppy Chow is a common one. I think in the Midwest, Puppy Chow is a very common thing. Basically, it's another one of these recipes that was probably developed by a test kitchen, normally very sweet and the very approachable flavors of chocolate and peanut butter melding all together. And so what were the occasions that you would have these cookies? Was it usually just kind of a treat to have at home with your family? Or would they also be made for bigger holiday celebrations or bake sales at school or anything like that?
Scott: I only have one memory of them being made for an occasion where we took them out to our farm and some other families joined us for a cookout and it was for some sort of summer holiday. I don't remember which one. It could easily have been the Fourth of July or something, and for the most part, it was something that was made at home. That may again be the fact that we were so greedy. That if they were made, it was hard to keep them around. They were never around for very long.
Kristen: This is the Genius Recipe Tapes. We'll be right back
Kristen: This recipe as I discovered it from you. it was published in your book with Edna Lewis. I would really love to hear what the process was like making that book. And how long it took you and how did the two of you put it together?
Scott: It was a long process. It was a slow process. We did have an amazing editor, the late Judith Jones, and that was wonderful and also intimidating. The book originally was supposed to come together in a year, and it instead. I think the pub date was actually seven years and one day from the day that Judith Jones said that the two of us should write a book together. And the process has been together because I could type and such. So I was doing it. The book is in my voice. It was absolutely a full collaboration. It was a mix of recipes from our own experiences separate from each other from childhood and just from life. And then a lot of it was the research that we did together or just everyday cooking that we did together because it did take a while to complete. By the time it was finished, we were living together. But in the years before we were living together, we would go on retreats, and we would sometimes go to my mother's house in Alabama and stay for a week or two and just cook in her kitchen. And also in Judith Jones's house, in that very storied kitchen that just had evidence of the most amazing cookbook authors everywhere you look. There was some gadget or some vessel or something that you recognize from Marcella Book or Marion Cunningham book or James Beard and Edna Lewis. There was evidence everywhere. It was quite wonderful.
Before I met Miss Lewis. I certainly wasn't thinking about Southern food at all. I liked it, but I didn't have a very high regard for it. It was common to me. I didn't have any idea there was any depth or breadth to it. I was young and Southern food was not popular at the time. It was the opposite of popular at the time. I want to be with the cool kids because I was young. I wanted to be cooking Italian food or French food or things. It was a process. It was an epiphany for me, frankly, and in the early days of that relationship that everything switched. And for me, from that moment, it was an actual moment, the rest of my life progressed, and I knew in that moment that this is what I would do forever. This was the kind of cooking that I would do and to learn about and explore it, try to champion it. Especially when I was younger, I was pretty evangelical. I’ve calmed down an awful lot since then. So one of the greatest things she gave me was that realization that my own experience had been unique and of worth and great value and delicious. I'm very proud of that book, and she was very proud of that book, and she would frequently comment on how heavy it was. And it is, and it did take a long time. It wasn't always easy, but it expresses that journey.
Kristen: I love that this book captures so many different facets of that in that it's your experience from Alabama, Miss Lewis's experience from Freetown, Virginia and other places that she would work as well and then everything in between the places that you had done the research and collected recipes from other places. I love that you say in your introduction the wide swath of the South and Southern cooking that the book represents. I do want to talk about the biscuit experience that you have been doing. Can you tell us about that?
Scott: I would love to. The Biscuit Experience is an experience. It is here in Marion. I'm crazy about the biscuit. I think there's a universe in the biscuit. I think the biscuit speaks. The biscuit speaks, the biscuit speaks. It's an iconic Southern food. I think there's so much mystery to it. I grew up, my mother, who was a good cook, was not a good biscuit maker, and my father would ridicule them. And so from the time I was five or so. It was canned biscuits, refrigerator biscuits from the store, which I thought were amazing. So when people come for the biscuit experience, it's very small groups, sometimes it's one person. People can come for a private experience. But we try to limit it to four or five or six people, tops. Preferences that people put their own groups together, but it has been so popular that we sometimes put together mixed groups of people. We might have someone from New York and someone from Houston and someone from London. It's usually half a day or so. Every biscuit experience is really a reaction to the people who attend. The beauty of the biscuit is that when you're going to get down to making the biscuit, it takes about 10 minutes.
There was one gentleman who came and he was in his seventies, and he brought when he came in the front door. He had a biscuit bowl in a pillowcase under his arm. He had called ahead and said he was bringing his grandmother's biscuit bowl to show to me, and she had raised him in Tennessee. And so her biscuits were very, very memorable for him and significant, and that was part of that was what brought him on this journey to come. He told me, and three people he did not know all about that experience in his memory of these biscuits and of her. I asked him her name, and it was voice cracked, and he turned away. The experience is whatever you bring to it, you know? And for some people, that's very emotional, or, a lot of people use the word spiritual, which I'm not opposed to. I think it's a word that gets overused a lot, but this is in the best sense and, you know, like for me, the biscuit, everyone has their own biscuit inside of them and the biscuit. I don't know. I know of nothing that expresses the actual touch of the cook more than the biscuit, and that comes through. And that's very, very moving and very powerful.
Kristen: That will keep me going through. All of this is the idea of taking a road trip to come to see you and make biscuits and talk biscuits.
Scott: I really do look forward to it.
Kristen: Scott, Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all these stories.
Scott: Thank you. Thank you, Thank you. Thank you. Don't be a stranger.
Kristen: You too.
Scott: All right. Bye. Y'all have the best day ever.
Kristen: And now here are some of our communities’ most memorable cookies.
Listener Sham Nagarajan: My name is Sham Nagarajan. Nan Khatai is a popular cookie in India. During one of my travels into Dehli, this old lady was making these fragrant cookies. She had repurposed an oil tin to make that into another one where she layered sand in the bottom and she fired it with embers of coal. She deftly mixed all-purpose flour, semolina, ghee, and sugar and flavored it with cardamom. The warmth of her palm and wrinkled hands turned out the most beautiful cookies. And she put it into the oven, and in about 10 to 12 minutes, the most fragrant, blistered cookie was out. And on a cold winter evening with a cup of chai in your hand, and this flaky, soft, warm cookie with a smoky aroma from the coal was just a flavor memory to cherish.
Listener Kaisha: Hi, my name is Kaisha, and I'm from Malaysia. My favorite cookie memory happens not only during Christmas but also during the Lunar New Year. My mom would come home with blocks of butter, and I know it's time. It would always be a sticky, oily mess to get it together. And the smell of butter would practically fill the whole kitchen. The batter is so soft we have to pipe out the cookies straight into the baking street. Sometimes we would decorate with candied cherries, super yummy. It only takes about 7 to 9 minutes to bake. And oh my God, the smell that it makes is amazing. So these Chinese butter cookies are my favorite cookie memory.
Listener Jessica Goldman Vong: Hi, this is Jessica Goldman Vong, author of Low So Good and Sodium Girls. Limitless Low Sodium Cookbook. So this cookie story begins with a cake, a simple icebox cake made from delicately smushing together whipped cream and chocolate wafers, a cake that my grandmother and then my mother all made for every family birthday that I can remember that I only realized as an adult actually came from a recipe on the back of the box. But even though this cake is simple in many ways kind of stolen, it is the thread of many childhood memories. Sneaking a lick of whipped cream from the bowl, learning to cut on an angle to reveal the stripes, exposing a zebra-like print that has kind of become the crest of my maternal line. So it seems only fitting that on one particular birthday, this story about a cake became one about a cookie.
On my 21st birthday, I was diagnosed with a severe case of Lupus and kidney failure and I spent the first few months of my newly minted adulthood fighting to survive. After that, much of my life looked very different, including what I could eat. Birthdays were no longer about celebrating another year past, but another year gained. And while I had to reimagine much of my daily habits, I found myself clinging to symbols of normalcy, like this icebox cake. But the cookie needed a makeover. So being born on December 23rd, I've always had a very natural obsession with the holidays. I spent the morning of my Bat Mitzvah singing Christmas carols. I love the lights, the music, the smells. So it made sense to turn to the one cookie that screams childhood joy and wonder gingerbread. My mother and I began experimenting with recipes, baking the gingerbread disks until the outside was crisp so it would hold up against the whipped cream clouds, with strong enough spices, so the flavors of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger would sprinkle throughout the cake-like tinsel, finding its way into every corner of the house. And what was once a recipe pilfered from the package of chocolate wafers suddenly had my fingerprints all over it. Knowing my life will be full of health challenges, I often think of what I will leave behind, especially as a mom. And this holiday gingerbread cookie icebox cake is now a part of my legacy, and maybe not just the recipe, but the idea that with a few adjustments, challenges could really be opportunities, and different can be good.
Kristen: Thanks for listening. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, Emily Hanhan, and me, Kristen Miglore. So I hope that the show stirred up some memories of your own and gets you and your loved ones talking about them over Zoom even if you can't be together this year wishing you all happy and healthy holidays.