On Food and Cooking

Louisiana slave named Antoine, who worked
out how to graft wood from superior trees
onto seedling stocks. Georgia, Texas, and New
Mexico are now the largest producers of
pecans.
Compared to the walnut, the pecan is more
elongated, the cotyledons thicker and
smoother, with a larger proportion of meat to
shell. As with walnuts, light-skinned varieties
are less astringent than dark-skinned. The
distinctive flavor of pecans remains somewhat
mysterious. In addition to the generic nutty
notes of the pyrazines, one study found a
lactone (octalactone) that is also present in
coconuts.
Pecans and walnuts are among the nuts
with the highest oil and unsaturated fatty acid
contents. High oil content generally goes
along with fragile texture, which means that
the kernels are easily bruised, with seepage of
oil to the surface and rapidoxidation and
staling. Roasting increases the rate of staling