I guess it's a southern thing - I had never heard of it before but it's now become a favorite. From Wikipedia:
"
Chess pie is a
dessert characteristic of
Southern U.S. cuisine. Recipes vary, but are generally similar in that they call for the preparation of a single
crust and a filling comprised of
eggs,
butter, granulated
sugar,
brown sugar and
vanilla. Some recipes call for
corn syrup; however, this tends to create a gelatinous consistency. The pie is then baked. The resulting
pie is very sweet and often consumed with
coffee in order to offset this somewhat. The preparation of a
pecan pie is essentially similar, with the addition of
pecans.
The pie seems to have no relation to the game of
chess, which has led to much speculation as to the origin of this term. Some theorize that the name of the pie traces back to its ancestral
England, where the dessert perhaps evolved from a similar cheese
tart, in which the archaic "cheese" was used to describe pies of the same consistency even without that particular ingredient present in the recipe. In
North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery, Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks argues that the name derives from
Chester,
England. One
folk etymology suggests that it was referred to as "just pie", which soon shortened to "jus' pie" and then corrupted to "chess pie". There is also a theory that the word "chess" pie comes from the piece of furniture that were common in the early South called a pie chest or pie safe. Chess pie may have been called chest pie at first because it held up well in the pie chest."