One of America's Favorites - Pecan Pie

Pecan pie

Pecan pie is a pie of pecan nuts mixed with a filling of eggs, butter, and sugar (typically corn syrup). Variations may include white or brown sugar, sugar syrup, molasses, maple syrup, or honey. It is popularly served at holiday meals and is also considered a specialty of Southern U.S. cuisine. Most pecan pie recipes include salt and vanilla as flavorings. Chocolate and bourbon whiskey are other popular additions to the recipe. Pecan pie is often served with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or hard sauce.


Pecans are native to the southern United States. Archaeological evidence found in Texas indicates that Native Americans used pecans more than 8,000 years ago. The word pecan is a derivative of an Algonquin word, pakani, referring to several nuts.

Sugar pies such as treacle tart were attested in Medieval Europe, and adapted in North America to the ingredients available, resulting in such dishes as shoofly pie, sugar pie, butter tart and chess pie. Pecan pie may be a variant of chess pie, which is made with a similar butter-sugar-egg custard.

Some have stated that the French invented pecan pie soon after settling in New Orleans, after being

A slice of pecan pie

introduced to the pecan nut by the Native American Quinipissa and Tangipahoa tribes. Claims have also been made of pecan pie existing in the early 1800s in Alabama, but this does not appear to be backed up by recipes or literature. Attempts to trace the dish's origin have not found any recipes dated earlier than a pecan custard pie recipe published in Harper's Bazaar in 1886. Well-known cookbooks such as Fannie Farmer and The Joy of Cooking did not include this dessert before 1940.

The makers of Karo syrup significantly contributed to popularizing the dish and many of the recipes for variants (caramel, cinnamon, Irish creme, peanut butter, etc.) of the classic pie. The company has claimed that the dish was a 1930s "discovery" of a "new use for corn syrup" by a corporate sales executive's wife. Pecan pie was made before the invention of corn syrup and older recipes used darker sugar based syrup or molasses. The 1929 congressional club cookbook has a recipe for the pie which used only eggs, milk, sugar and pecan, no syrup. The Pecan pie came to be closely associated with the culture of the Southern United States in the 1940s and 1950s.


Variations
In his 2004 book, Ken Haedrich identified a number of popular pecan pie variants:

Chocolate pecan tarts prior to baking

Butterscotch
Characterized by the addition of butterscotch chips and brown sugar (in addition to, not in place of, corn syrup)

Whiskey chocolate chip
In this pie, chocolate chips and a few teaspoons of Jack Daniel whiskey are added.

Alice Colombo's Race Day Chocolate Pecan Pie
This pie is named after Alice Colombo, who was a food editor for the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky. This pie was made by her on the occasion of the Kentucky Derby. The special ingredients suggested in the recipe include cornstarch, to soften the top, bourbon, chocolate chips and whipped cream.

Maple
Includes maple syrup and almond extract

Chocolate brownie
This pie has nuts on the surface and it is layered with chocolate pudding and fudge. It is served at room temperature or chilled.

Sawdust Pie
Sawdust Pie is a signature recipe of Patti's Restaurant in Paducah, Kentucky, consisting of an egg-batter filling with coconut, graham cracker crumbs and pecans, topped with whipped cream and sliced bananas.