When Rachel Barnett married her husband Henry in the summer of 2006 in South Carolina, they didn’t serve wedding cake at their reception. They served peach cobbler. “I wanted to recognize his family’s peach farming history,” explains Rachel, who along with Lyssa Kligman Harvey, co-authored “Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina.” 

Henry comes from a line of Jewish farmers in the state that goes back to B.J. Barnett, his great-grandfather, who moved to the U.S. from Estonia in the mid-1800s. As the family settled in South Carolina, they opened rural shops, first selling dry goods and later general merchandise, cotton seed, and fertilizer. They also became farmers, but it wasn’t until 1956 that they planted peach trees. Barnett’s Peaches, in time, became one of the largest peach orchards in South Carolina. 

Sadly, Barnett’s Peaches closed in the mid-1990s, but the fruit’s presence in the family has endured. During the summer, when it’s in season, the family enjoys peach cobbler on Edisto Island, just off the South Carolina coast, where they have a vacation home on a deep water creek. Rachel is quick to share credit for the recipe, saying: “It is an old recipe that many folks across the South make in the summer. It's so easy and delicious!”

Sprinkling the sugar over the peaches just before baking is the genius move here: the sugar turns crispy and caramelized in the oven, forming a sort of crackable lid to the cobbler. Serve with ice cream.