I have no idea why this pie is called Tennessee Williams’ Lemon Pie but supposedly he said it was “good enough to slap ya mama.”  Which begs the question: Why would you want to assault your mother just because this lemon pie is really tasty?  At any rate, it seems the recipe is also called, “Tennessee Pie,” and maybe that’s how it became associated with the famous playwright at some point.  Google couldn’t explain it.  However, Google did remind me that in New Orleans, there is a Tennessee Williams Festival every year which includes a Stella yelling contest.  Maybe there should also be a pie baking contest.

According to Wikipedia:

Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O’Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Arthur Miller‘s Death of a Salesman.

Whatever the playwright’s connection was to this recipe, if there was one at all, it remains a good recipe.  It is easy.  It is a great do-ahead dish.  And it has a fabulous lemony tangy creamy sweet-tart taste.  Now, it doesn’t always slice up neatly, that’s true.  But the sweetest parts of life aren’t always neat, right?  Maybe that’s the real connection this dish has to the great Southern writer Tennessee Williams.