I feel like a bad Virginian, a bad Virginian with Carolinian roots. Peanut pie is local to my homestate but I'd never heard of it. In my defense, I don't live in peanut country. But still, I love the little legume. A Payday and Coke are post mountain run treat. Road trips have double dipped goobers. Curried peanut soup during the winter. Mr. Goodbar ties the Special Dark for favorite Hershey mini. And Reese’s Cups are banned from the house because I’ll make myself sick. But, no, I'd never heard of peanut pie. (And neither had most Redditors over at r/DixieFood despite Southern Living claiming it's a classic.)

Carolina Peanut Rum Pie came to my attention while searching New Southern Baking for a non-yellow pie. (Seriously, the last few weeks have been nothing but custards and lemon pies.) It had me at “rum” and “peanut.” Some basic research led to peanut pie recipes that mimic pecan pie, but Fowler’s uses peanut butter to mimic Sarah Rutledge’s ground peanuts from The Carolina Housewife (1847). And I found a peanut butter pie in Seems Like I Done it This Way that has the same basic form. The addition of peanut butter, to me at least, sets this apart from simply being a pecan pie made with peanuts.

The method is pretty straightforward. Mix the filling, fold in the peanuts, and pour into a par-baked pastry shell.

Overall, I like it. Everyone else liked it, too. It still tasted a little too much like a pecan pie with peanuts. It needed more salt and maybe more peanut butter to set it apart more. I’m wondering what toasting the peanuts would do, too, as well as replacing the white sugar with honey. A different crust, too, like a saltine cracker crust.