Favorite Recipe

        I thought a long time about which recipe to write about, and in the end I chose Granny Hinch’s Peach Cobbler. The thing is I don’t have the recipe, only the memories of eating it. Heck, there probably wasn’t a recipe actually written down anyway.

Not my photo - its from Google, but its close to how I remember it.

You see, Granny was raised in very rural Tennessee, and I’m sure learned to cook by watching and doing how her mamma did things. And since she was the oldest daughter, I also imagine she helped out a lot in the kitchen. 

“Granny” (Rebecca Catherine Oxier Sherrill was born in 1885 to George Akin Sherrill and Flora Ann Thurman Sherrill. They lived up in the mountains Cumberland County, TN.  She married Steward (Stewart) Hinch in 1904, when she was 19. Growing up she had 4 siblings, and 4 half-siblings (her half-siblings’ mother was Isabella Nail, George’s first wife, who died at age 49). Rebecca and Stewart were my dad Roscoe’s parents. 

Rebecca Sherrill Hinch, possibly 1904 on wedding day

Now back to that cobbler. I only got to spend a couple weeks each summer with Granny and Grandpa Hinch. We lived in New Jersey and they were in Tennessee. So each summer our family would drive to see them for a week or so. This would have been in the 1950’s and 60’s. 

At that time, even though they lived in a small town by then, I believe Granny cooked most of the food on a wood-burning stove, even in the heat of the summer. She also caught the chickens for supper, wrung their necks, cleaned them and cooked them up. My mom said she didn’t know how she did it all.

When we arrived at their home in Spring City for a visit, she would always have a meal ready for us. Sometimes that would include peach cobbler for desert, which apparently I had never had before. It impressed me so much I still remember it to this day over 60 years later.

I remember she baked it in a large cast iron dutch oven. And I expect she used canned peaches that she put up herself, as she had a large (kinda scary) root cellar that I used to go down in with her a few times. And the crust for this cobbler was absolutely fantastic.  I have tried to replicate her cobbler a few times, but I actually don’t think its possible to do in this day and age. Of course part of that might be my memory of it is enhanced by time.

The Stewart Hinch family in early 1930's

Anyway, Granny was such a very smart and impressive lady, always with a twinkle in her bright blue eyes. She worked from sun up to sun down and into the night, but she always had time for us grandkids. I can still see her sitting on their back porch churning butter, and teaching us tongue twisters. She was so darn good at them too! 

“Betty Botter bought some butter. “But” she said, “the butter’s bitter.  If I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter - that would make my batter better.”

I’ll keep trying to replicate her recipe, and maybe someday I will get close. But even if mine are not as good, they are still edible, and I think of her whenever I try my hand of that cobbler too!

Stewart & Rebecca Hinch on their front porch swing, in late 1950's I think