P
ee-can. Pih-kahn. Pee-kahn. A nut by any other name
wouldn’t have such a hotly contested pronunciation,
but however you say it, the pecan’s infl uence onAmerican baking is a universal truth not up for debate.
Naturally growing along the Mississippi River, from the tip of
Illinois down to the bayous of Louisiana, the pecan tree is the
only nut tree native to North America, and its plump, brown
nut has become a signature ingredient in some of our most
beloved baked goods, from rich pecan pie to nut-studded
hummingbird cake. Even with its assured place in American
heritage, the pecan has journeyed a winding path from foraged
food to pantry staple.
The Native Americans were the fi rst to eat the indigenous nut
and, fi ttingly, gave the pecan its name. The word pecan derives
from the Algonquin word for “nuts that require a stone to crack.”
Across the board, pecans were valued as a source for trade and
barter, but the nut itself was a miracle for the Native American
diet, a hardy food source that could survive long journeys and
storage and offered exponential nutrition for its small size.
Like the Native Americans, the colonists quickly became fans
of the tender and chewy pecan. Founding fathers George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson were ardent admirers of
the nut, planting pecan trees at their famous estates of Mount
Vernon and Monticello, respectively, in Virginia. But despite its
many delicious virtues, the pecan tree remained an untamed
resource until the 19th century. One hundred nuts from one
single pecan tree will turn into 100 unique pecan trees, each
one bearing different strains of pecans. This made selective
growing nearly impossible for would-be pecan farmers.
Finally, in 1846, a slave gardener named Antoine—alas, no
last name is recorded—discovered the way to graft pecan
trees, where identical trees could come from one superior
pecan tree, revolutionizing the process of growing and
harvesting pecans. By the 1880s, the end product of this
grafting, the Centennial pecan, had made its debut
as the new cash crop for the South. By the time the
1930s rolled around, millions of pounds of pecans
were harvested in Georgia alone, still the highest
producer of pecans to this day.
It’s diffi cult to imagine the South’s decadent
dessert spread without the presence of the
pecan. Again and again, the pecan was used
to transform sweets from the Old World
into something uniquely American.
Folded into the lofty cake batters and
studding the fl uffy frostings of carrot cake, Italian cream cake,
and German chocolate cake, the pecan acts as both a crunchy
adornment and a buttery fl avor booster to classic Southern
cakes. As a rule, Southerners are known to take an already good
thing and make it better with pecans. A perfect example of this
compulsion is the pecan sandie. The sandie is an Americanized
take on the French shortbread cookie called sablé, but with
chopped pecans mixed into the dough. Pralines, a caramel
confection brought to Louisiana by French settlers, became a
signature Southern treat with the swap of locally grown
pecans for imported almonds.Then there is the most iconic
of desserts: the pecan pie. A
descendant of
medieval treacle
tarts, pecan
pie shares a
common
thread with