Missouri Paw-Paw Pie

The paw-paw is America's great culinary secret, hidden in plain sight along riverbanks and forest understories from Missouri to Michigan. Indigenous peoples cultivated these trees for millennia. Lewis and Clark survived on paw-paws when their provisions ran low. Yet somehow this fruit, with its intoxicating perfume of banana, mango, and vanilla custard, never found its way onto supermarket shelves.

Missouri claims the paw-paw as its own. The trees thrive in the state's river bottoms, their enormous tropical-looking leaves shading clusters of green fruit that ripen to a dusky yellow in September. Foragers know the secret: you must find them at the precise moment of ripeness, when the flesh yields to gentle pressure and the fragrance announces itself from ten feet away. Miss that window and the fruit falls, feeding raccoons and possums instead of pie plates.

This custard pie honors the paw-paw's natural tendencies. The fruit already tastes like dessert, its flesh so creamy you could eat it with a spoon. Here we fold that flesh into a simple egg custard, pour it into a butter crust, and bake until just set. The result tastes like something between banana cream pie and a tropical fantasy, yet comes from the heartland of America.

I learned to make this pie from a woman who ran a roadside stand outside Hermann, Missouri. She sold paw-paw everything: ice cream, bread, cookies, and this pie that people drove hours to taste. Her secret was restraint. Let the fruit speak. Don't mask it with spices or drown it in sugar. The paw-paw knows what it wants to be.