The Lost Recipe: A Sweet Potato Pie Mystery
No one knew exactly what Aunt Thelma put in that pie.
Every Thanksgiving, she’d hum her hymns, shoo folks from her kitchen, and emerge hours later with two golden sweet potato pies cooling on the windowsill like blessings from heaven. The smell alone could make you forget your manners.
But this year, Thelma was gone.
Her sister Della stood in the kitchen now, flour on her forearms, a look of near despair in her eyes. “I told her to write it down,” she muttered. “Said she’d ‘get around to it.’”
On the counter sat a dozen sweet potatoes — peeled, boiled, and staring back at her like witnesses.
“I think she used brown sugar,” said Gloria, the youngest niece.
“Brown sugar burns too quick,” said Carl. “She used white.”
“White don’t give you that color,” Gloria shot back. “You ever see her pie come out pale?”
From the living room came the crackle of football, the high whistle of a referee. The family’s Thanksgiving was hanging by a thread, and everyone knew it.
“Maybe it’s about how you stir it,” said Junior, dipping a spoon into the mixture. “You know, counterclockwise — like she did when she was praying.”
Della snatched the spoon. “You think this is voodoo? It’s pie, not a séance.”
They bickered and guessed, adding a pinch of this, a dash of that. Someone remembered Thelma singing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ while baking, so they tried humming along, half-laughing, half-serious.
It didn’t work.
The first pie came out raw in the middle. The second, burnt on top. The third one — well, the crust slid clean off the pan.
By the fourth attempt, Della was ready to give up. She sank into a chair, the room heavy with disappointment and the faint smell of failure. “Maybe some things die with the person,” she said softly.
And then little Olivia, age eight, walked in holding a folded scrap of paper. “This fell out the old church cookbook,” she said.
On it, written in Thelma’s looping script, were just four words, but they were smudged. Everyone bent their heads together, peering at the little note closely.
“Add,” Gloria said. “That first word is ‘add.’”
”Yeah, I can see that,” Carl snapped.
”Third word’s … ‘stir.’ Yeah, that’s it. ‘Stir,’” Junior said.
”And the fourth word …,” Della paused. “That’s ‘gently.’”
”But what’s that second word?” Carl asked. “Looks like that’s the key. Without that word, we ain’t got nothing.”
Everyone went quiet.
“Wait a minute,” Della cried. “I think I got it.”
She shared her notion of what it could be. Heads bobbed all around. Carl slapped her on the back. Gloria hugged her. “I think that’s it.”
Della wiped her hands and stood. “All right,” she said finally. “One more try.”
They worked together this time — no arguing, no measuring spoons, just memory and feel. Gloria mashed, Carl mixed, Junior stirred, and Della hummed. The scent began to rise — warm, spiced, forgiving.
When the timer dinged, they gathered around the oven.
The pie wasn’t perfect. The crust leaned to one side. The filling had a crack down the middle. But the smell — oh, that smell — filled the room with something Thelma herself might’ve called grace.
They cut into it, passed plates around, and for a moment, nobody said a word.
Finally, Della smiled through her tears. “Well,” she said, “looks like she did write it down after all.”
What do you think the missing word in Thelma’s receipt was?
