David> Join us as we delve into forgotten flavors of southern orchards and discover the Dyehouse cherry.

To know what's lost, you have to know what was.

A final request of Kentuckian George Dyehouse was to grow a southern cherry, a tasty tart cherry, a cherry to dye for... But over time, this flavorful sour cherry was lost.

What happened?

A mystery.

♪ [opening music] ♪ In every heirloom seed lies a story of survival, of resilience, a flavor forgotten by the modern world.

Join Charleston chef Kevin Mitchell and me, food historian David Shields on our mission to preserve the long lost flavors of the South.

We are "The Savers of Flavor."

♪ music plays: ♪ Can she make a cherry pie, ♪ ♪ Billy Boy, Billy Boy?

Can she make a cherry pie?

♪ ♪ Charming Billy ♪ David> There it is.

Dyehouse.

The one classic southern cherry.

Glossy.

Orange red.

Best very early cherry.

♪ [phone rings] Kevin.

Hey, I got it.

Yeah, I found it in a Stark Brothers catalog.

The Dyehouse.

That's right.

We're on.

♪ [sound of car engine] ♪ David> Here's some curvy, country roads here.

It's like squiggles on the map.

Kevin> This car is handling it pretty good.

Pretty good.

David> Well, it's a ton and a half of American steel.

Hey, Kevin, what would you say are the classic southern pies?

Kevin> The top of my head, we have pecan, sweet potato, David> You got to agree with that.

Kevin> buttermilk, blueberry, cherry.

David> You know, when you go over that list, and I think that's a really good list, you presume that all the ingredients used to make the pies come from the south.

Kevin> Yes.

You know, sugar cane grows in the south, so you would have to expect that the rest of those ingredients grow right here in the South as well.

David> I thought so, too, until I learned about the cherries.

Kevin> What are you saying?

No one grows cherries in the south.

David> Cherries are gone with the wind.

Kevin> It's got to be B.S.

I mean, the many historic southern kitchens I've traveled through and cooked in, the cherry pitting machine was standard equipment.

David> Cherries were grown in the south.

There was this one cherry that was cultivated from the 1870s to the 1950s that was a southern cherry.

The name of that cherries.

The Dyehouse.

It hails from Kentucky.

Kevin> Where does cherry fall in the spectrum of deliciousness?

David> Well, you know, it's definitely on the tart cherry side.

It's a classic pie and, preserves.

I guess they call it jam up in this part of the woods.

Kevin> You gotta call it jam.

David> And you're probably wondering, you know, how did the cherry get lost?

Kevin> Yeah.

Where did it go?

Why is it lost?

David> Can't really say.

It's something of a mystery.

Particularly since it was sold by Stark Brothers, a major national nursery.

The Second World War, it was sold by so many people and planted by so many people.

I figure it still has to be out here somewhere.

Kevin> How'd you track this one down?

David> I got a friend here in Kentucky, and he has a show, radio show, and he heard that I was interested in tracking down this cherry.

So, he did a most wanted poster type of, show with descriptions and, photographs and got broadcast and wouldn't you know, it got a hit.

Somerset, Kentucky.

That's not too far from Lincoln County, where the, cherry began, and that's where we're heading.

<Okay> So, to the old family land of, Dan Dutton, an artist.

Kevin> An artist.

Hey, that's fascinating.

David> Here it is.

Campground Road.

We're getting close.

♪ We'll have to see what an artist bailiwick looks like.

Kevin> Yeah, I'm very, very fascinated by that.

Dan> David.

Welcome.

So good to see you.

David> Hey, it's great to be here.

Dan> Kevin.

Nice to meet you.

Welcome to Dandyland.

<Thank you> David> I couldn't help notice, but these wonderful, huge trees on the way and how long as your family owned this farm?

Dan> The first deed is in 1810, and the farm kind of expanded a little bit after that.

So, these trees have been growing here quite a while.

Kevin> All right, well, speaking of trees, let's go see this cherry tree.

Dan> All right.

Well, it's just over the edge of the garden.

Let's take a step over here.

David> Show us the way.

This is a great old beech tree here to the left.

Dan> Oh, thanks.

Yeah.

There's really some wonderful plants growing here.

Look, here's a wild black raspberry that I let those grow here.

The wild phlox.

And here is the Dyehouse sapling.

David> This is it.

<Yes> There's an entire grove of these things.

Dan> Yes.

They've come up from the roots, wherever, I don't mow, they come up.

But, if you just step back here, I'll show you the mother tree that they originate from.

<Oh> So here it is.

The modest thing now.

Couple of years ago, we had a winter storm that took the mother tree down.

And I have seen that happen three times now in my lifetime.

And, new tree has come back up out of the roots.

And that's what you see here.

It's probably two years old.

David> What was the circumference of this?

Dan> I want to say probably about 16 inches.

It makes a tree about 30 foot tall, if you let it go.

And I fully expect that I'll see it get that large, because as you can see, it's a fast growing tree.

David> Well, looks like the roots are still alive.

Dan> Yes.

Yeah.

And they're headed out here under the yard.

If I didn't mow this, that would be Dyehouse, There would be Dyehouse saplings just like this, growing everywhere.

David> So how far out do they grow?

Dan> Well, they grow all the way out across the yard to the other side of the garden.

And where I stop mowing and stop plowing, they come back up again.

So, there's actually a whole row headed out through there.

Yeah, it's a lovely tree in the spring.

It has, pretty flowers.

And then the fruit is a lovely thing to on.

David> It looks like there's, something chewing on it.

So, you know, it must be good.

Dan> Yes.

Well, I'll tell you, the birds certainly love the cherries.

You have to, you have to be, early to rise to beat the birds to them.

<Right> All right, if you'll follow me, I'll show you my painting studio.

And I'll show you a painting of the cherry tree.

David> Great.

So, Dan, I can't tell how old this building is.

Dan> Well, I built it, but the wood came from a carriage barn built in, around 1810, 1820.

♪ soft music ♪ David> There was a moment when you realized that this was this famous lost cherry that people had been combing the South for decades trying to find.

What changes took place?

Did people start approaching you about the cherries or... Dan> I saw the image and thought, okay, well that looks like the same cherry.

And then I started reading a little bit about that.

And whenever I landed on the sentence that it was last known, growing along Crab Orchard Road, I was like, well, that's here.

And then it all begins to sort of fall in place.

I knew that my dad's home place here, which dated back to 1810, that there were a lot of different fruit trees there.

And my parents loved, fruit trees and move trees from there to this farm.

Once the botanist came here and examined the tree, you know, in more detail and the determination was made that it was the Dyehouse.

I know for me, that was that deal of reading, of how that it came up from root, root suckers coming up to form new trees.

I thought, that's it.

That's got to be it.

All these things, it fell into place, the color of it.

I had not yet done any taste comparison.

I literally hadn't tasted any other sour pod cherries except this one, so I had no idea how unique the flavor is <Right> until the this all came to pass.

And then as various orchardist throughout the South began to, you know, to email me and message me.

You know, I started digging the saplings up, wrapping them in wet newspapers and packing them in a way I thought they would survive and sending them off.

And as more and more of them beginning to go outward, it began to strike me more the importance of the situation.

David> Give us some sort of geographic, range of where these trees have been gone.

Dan> I think the farther south is probably Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas.

I've sent trees to all of those states, now.

It could just as easily have happened that I would have lived and died without ever knowing that the Dyehouse was here, and someone could have just bulldozed it over, and that would have been the end of the tree and the end of that story.

But instead the story blossomed again.

I think that's beautiful.

David> I noticed this painting here, <Right, aflutter with birds> where the birds are, dancing in between the branches, brandishing their newly plucked cherries from this tree.

Well, it looks like your cherry picker is slumbering down there.

David> Yes.

You know, the cherry picker has picked a bucket of cherries.

And there they are, the wonderful things.

But now has started to dream about perhaps the pods to come or whatever, and dozes off, and the birds come and steal all the cherries while you're doing it.

So, the idea of keeping these heirlooms alive and so that they can travel onward through time and nourish people and amaze people with these beautiful flavors, that's what I think is important.

David> You know, my conversation with Dan put me in mind of a poem I read in the old Saint Nicholas Magazine.

This was published back in the 1870s.

It was called, "Cherries."

Under the tree, the farmer said, smiling and shaking his wise old head, Cherries are ripe.

But then you know there's grass to cut and corn to hoe.

We can gather the cherries any day, but when the sun shines we must make our hay.

Tonight, when the chores have all been done, we'll muster the boys for fruit and fun.

Up in the tree, a robin said, perking and cocking his saucy head, "Cherries are ripe.

And so today we'll gather them while you make the hay.

We are the boys with no corn to hoe, no cows to milk, and no grass to mow."

At night, the farmer said, "Here's a trick, those roguish robins have had their pick."

♪ Kevin> I've got a beautiful array of cherries here for you.

Dan> I don't think I've ever seen so many kinds of cherries.

What do we have here?

Kevin> When you go to the grocery store, fresh cherries you see during cherry season are either these <okay> or these <right> and both of these are sweet cherries.

You don't get fresh sour cherries in American grocery stores.

<Why is that?> American grocery stores want to sell immediate gratification cherries.

Fruit you can buy, pop in your mouth and pay off in a really big way.

Dan> Ahh, I get it.

So just wash it and eat it.

Kevin> Yes.

Here you have the classic Bing.

<Okay> And this was created by a Chinese immigrant named Ah Bing at the Seth Lewelling Orchard in Milwaukee, Oregon.

This one arose in the mid 1870s as a cross between the Black Republican cherry and the Royal Ann.

Here's its parent, the Royal Ann, now considered a specialty cherry.

It was originally a French sweet cherry sold in the early 19th century called the Napoleon Bigarreau.

It is softer than the Bing, which makes it harder to ship, but it is sweet.

Now we use it for chocolate covered cherries or for home canning.

The Royal Ann looks closer to the Rainier cherry than the Bing cherry, yet the Bing was one of its parents.

Variety called the Van is the other.

Down in the South, we don't see this cherry much.

This is called the Lapins, which was another offspring of the Van Cherry.

It was bred in British Columbia in Canada and released in 1983 by Karlis Lapins, and is well-loved by growers since it doesn't split when growing.

Sweetheart cherry is another Canadian bred sweet cherry.

Its great claim to fame is that it grows on a self fertilizing tree, so you don't have to have pairings of a male and a female trees in the orchard.

Dan> Ahh, so a home grown could grow a single tree and grow this cherry.

Kevin> Finally, here is a sour cherry that dominates the American market.

It is an old French heirloom called the Montmorency, and orchards of the tree cover entire counties in Michigan.

Dan> Okay.

Well, let me try this.

♪ Okay, it's tart, but it is not as tart as the Dyehouse cherry.

And it doesn't have its intense of cherry flavor, either.

Kevin> So we've got sweet cherries from Oregon, Washington, Canada, and Northern California.

We've got sour cherries from Michigan.

What is the geographic common denominator here?

Dan> All those of northern states or northern parts of states.

So why is that?

Kevin> All cherries need to be cold for a portion of the year in order for the trees to set fruit.

So that's something of a problem in parts of the South.

The Dyehouse is a variety that doesn't require as many chill hours as other sour cherries to flourish.

That's the one reason why it became the southern cherry.

Dan> That and the fact that it tastes fantastic and I think that it's going to be much better for making pies.

Kevin> Let's go make a pie.

Dan> I'm ready.

Let's do it.

Kevin> All right.

Let's do it.

♪ Dan> Do you want to try making this pie the way my mom made it?

Kevin> I would love to do that.

Dan> I'll show you how old fashioned Kentucky pies were made, okay?

Kevin> Perfect.

That's what I'm waiting for.

Fantastic.

We want to make the crust first.

Sure.

Okay.

Go right ahead.

Dan> All right, well, let me get in here.

So we've got about three cups here.

That's perfect.

Kevin> Now, why is this pie so special to you?

Dan> My mom was a wonderful cook, and we grew up eating her cherry pies, all of her fruit pies, blackberry, raspberry, apple, peach, all the different kinds of fruit pies.

I learned how to cook in the kitchen with her.

One thing that she told me actually, about making, pie crust.

She said, go by, feel, not by sight.

She meant quite a bit <Yes> by that.

Kevin> My grandmother would say the same thing.

She make pies, her pies that she would make the most would be sweet potato.

I try to get her in the kitchen to make me a sweet potato pie.

Dan> get a taste of home.

All right, I'm gonna put a pinch of salt in with this.

We're going to do a mixture, probably about 50-50 of butter and lard.

And I'm going to say we're going to put in maybe about six tablespoons.

<Okay> When I first begin learning to bake things in the kitchen, you know, watching my mom, it seem that there must be some kind of magic involved in it.

You know, I would ask her, I would say, stop and let me measure that, you know, and she would say, okay, watch this.

She's like, pour some salt into her, palm of her hand.

She said, give me that spoon.

Pour it out, exactly one teaspoon.

Kevin> That's how my grandmother did it.

She wouldn't give me recipes, per se.

She would just make me sit and watch.

<Watch> That's the beauty of food for me, you know, just learning from, you know, the matriarch, the woman, the woman of the family Dan> passing that love on down.

<Yes> That's true.

So when you get this about the texture, of course meal, you know, you could have lumps.

My mom would say that's big as a pea.

You don't need to fuss over it a whole bunch.

And now you just need enough water to get this to come together in a crumbly mass.

Kevin> Starting to look good.

Dan> Typically, I'll chill this for about a half hour, 15 minutes to a half hour.

How about I go take this and put it in the fridge and I'll be right back with the dough.

Kevin> And I'll start working on the filling.

<All right> So of course we have our beautiful Dyehouse cherries here.

We have about five cups or so in here.

We're just going to add that.

We got about a cup of sugar here.

You try to get as much as the sugar granules melted into this beautiful cherry liquid here.

Then from there you're going to need a little bit of, cornstarch.

Of course, that's going to bring the pie together.

About a third of a cup of cornstarch.

Just kind of sprinkle it over.

Now, I like to add just a little bit of, vanilla.

So I'm going to do just about a teaspoon of vanilla extract here.

And then I like to use a little bit of lemon.

Just scrape once or twice.

Now I'm gonna do just a pinch of salt.

Got the, the filling made?

Dan> Well I took the dough and I divided it into two discs and chilled it a little bit.

So we're ready now to roll this out.

Flour this up here.

Kevin> That's why I try to instill with my students at the culinary school.

You gotta have the heart.

You gotta have passion for what you want to do.

I can show them all the rest.

Dan> I'll move this over, and I'm going to pop this on, and you can you may have to do a little, a little adjusting there to get that in place.

Kevin> So we're going to put the, just go ahead and put the filling in, yes?

Dan> Okay.

Mmm.

Look at that.

It's going to be good.

Kevin> This is going to be really good.

We want to use up all these beautiful Dyehouse cherries in here.

Dan> Yeah, they're a precious thing.

Kevin> You like me to trim this off a little bit?

Dan> Yeah.

Just go ahead and, if you want to, and trim that.

I think of it as my own innovation.

But, I'm sure plenty of other people have done it, but it's great for doing a lattice, a pizza cutter.

<Yeah> So I'm just going to try to make, some strips.

Kevin> Yeah.

So you're all about a thinner lattice.

Dan> This is about the size that I really like in terms of having a certain amount of crust with the amount of filling that you have.

So I'm going to take every other strip, you know, so that I'll have enough to go the other way.

And I'm just going to place these about the same width of what my cut was.

Kevin> Okay.

Beautiful already.

Dan> I hear a catbird up there that's fussing about us, like, yeah, you all the ones that got my cherries.

[laughs] True labor of love right here.

All right, so what we're going to do is, I'm just going to fold back every other one across here, really carefully lay it over on top of itself.

Yeah, just fold it back a little bit and we're going to put the first one on and then just bring them back.

And when you do give it a little press and we're going to do every other one again.

The ones that have gone over now are going to need to go the other way.

And like I say this is kind of delicate.

And this one here is our broken one.

So this is where we're going to do this hard.

See, you know, in the kitchen you have a little mistake.

Nobody is going to I know.

Yeah.

You make a pie like this and you're intersecting with history and community and a really wonderful way.

Kevin> And that's what, for me, food is all about, is learning and understanding where things come from and for me specifically, you know, the people.

Dan> Making something like this in the kitchen together, it's a way of making friendships, too.

All right.

Now that we got those all on there, just go around and sort of give them a little bit of a press with your fingers.

Now, if you trim that off all the way around with the knife again.

Kevin> So what do you have there?

Dan> Well, this is one of my little personal touches.

I've mixed some, milk and some maple sirup together.

It's to help the sugar we're going to put on, stick to it.

But the little bit of brownness that it has to it, you know, helps this lattice to have it come out with a nice golden color.

You just going to do regular white sugar?

Let's, let's use the, the raw sugar on it and we'll have even a little bit more brown.

You see if you can get a little bit everywhere on there.

Kevin> I think we're good to go.

Dan> All right I'm going to pop this in the oven.

<All right> And, about 45 minutes to an hour we're going to have a pie.

Kevin> Oh, fantastic.

♪ Dan> We have pies.

Kevin> Beautiful.

David> Oh, look at that.

Well, deserves to be on a pedestal.

Dan, come on over here.

Down with me.

I'm eager to have a taste of this.

And don't be stingy here.

[laughs] No, I don't think that Chef Mitchell's going to do that.

Serious slice of pie.

David> Oh, no.

You're not getting this, Dan.

[laughs] Dan> I should have known.

David> I've been the person that's been looking for the Dyehouse for years.

Look at that.

Dan> That's everything you'd want a cherry pie to be.

Yeah, look at that color, the crystal.

To George W. Dyehouse, wherever you are.

♪ Yeah, that's a lip smacker.

Dan> This to me, is the taste of home.

Kevin> Sugar on the lattice.

Really nice texture.

David> Dan, we need to serenade.

<A serenade?> That's right.

Dan> Pies ain't enough for you, David.

You need music, too?

The old mountain dulcimer.

Kentucky dulcimer.

David> Go ahead, Dan.

You know the one.

Dan> ♪ Can she bake a ♪ ♪ cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Can she bake a ♪ ♪ Cheery pie, Charming Billy?

♪ ♪ She can bake a cherry pie, ♪ ♪ quick as a cat can wink its eye.

♪ ♪ She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

♪ David> Well, that's the one question.

Can she bake that pie?

[laughs] Dan> Well, we know we can.

Kevin> That's right.

David> As long as you got the Dyehouse cherry, and when you taste that, you know the Dyehouse will live on.

♪ ♪ ♪