November 29, 2025 • 35 mins
This culinary nut is a staple the Southern U.S. — and has been since way before such a thing existed. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren break open the history and cultures behind pecans.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lorn Vogelbaum, and today we
have a classic episode for you about pecans.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Ooh, you chose a pronunciation already.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I literally had to. I had to say the word
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
She came out fighting.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, we discussed that very thing a great deal in
this episode, which came out originally in November of twenty eighteen,
so long ago. As is common with some of these
older episodes, it was a joy to return to. But
(00:53):
also we were so bouncy and care free, like twenty eighteen,
US was just floating along.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, we were, We were well. I once again, I
think I do know the answer to this. But was
there any particular reason this was on your mind to
bring backward?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh yeah, definitely A I do love talking about culinary nuts.
They're super fascinating. Be This one is very holiday coded
here in the United States because pecans are a fall
to winter crop that get incorporated into a lot of
(01:42):
holiday dishes, a lot of desserts also, things like stuffing perhaps,
And they're just a really lovely, like warm, sweet, buttery
kind of flavor that lends themselves to that kind of application.
And so yeah, right around this year, I start just
craving pecan pie. I just go like, why am I
(02:03):
not eating that right now? Even though I didn't grow
up with it at all?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
But I didn't either, but the first time I had it,
I also thought, yeah, where have you been?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right? Where have you been? Oh? Oh my gosh. Well,
I guess we should let past Lauren and Annie take
it away.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Bouncily, Yes, hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Race
and I'm Lorn vocal Bomb. And today we're talking about pecans.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yes, pecans, because this is another episode that will include
some fun with pronunciation. Studies have found there are four
distinct pronunciations of pecan.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I say pecan.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I say pecan as well. I think where I grew
up it was pecan.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
According to this study, if you're curious, seventy percent of
Northeasterners say pecan, while forty five percent of Southerners do.
The preferred Southern pronunciation is pecan. And I know there's
a Southern I didn't write it down, but there's like
a Southern joke about pecan, a pecan being something truckers
(03:29):
used to pee in where they don't have time to stop.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Anyway, we're we're gonna say.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm gonna say pecan because that's how I grew up
saying it.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I've switched. I'm a convert, you're a convert. I'm a
pecan convert.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Pecan convert. That's fun to say. That's fun to say.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
And just a note here before we dive in, if
you haven't had fresh pecans, they are amazing. My dad's
old office used to have this big pecan tree next
to it, and they were so good if you got
to them before the squirrels did. Because those squirrels, oh yeah,
you had to fight.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You had to fight for it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
We are not the only beings that like eating pecans,
not at all.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
And I once took an acting job and what I
thought was Decatur.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Georgia, which is right next to Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That would have been a very short commute for me.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Turns out there's a Decatur, Alabama, And so for months
I commuted to Decatur, Alabama every weekend. And it's a
very small place. It's pretty, but they do have a
lot of fresh pecans. In fact, we filmed inside a
fresh pecan store like it just had fans of pecans,
(04:42):
So I'll put that in the positives column for that
whole fiasco where I should have.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It taught me an important lesson.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Always do your research and know where your job is
that you're accepting.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
That's a good, good, good tip. Thanks, Thanks Annie. It
should have been obvious, but you know, life isn't always obvious.
That's true.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
There are some things about pecaus that aren't obvious either,
which brings us to our question.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
What are they? Well? Planes?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Elevated Convection at night or PECAN is a multi department
field project studying nighttime thunderstorms in the arid regions of
the United States in order to determine.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
What I think that's that's a front and they're actually
delving into whether or not there's an alternate dimension. Oh
we like I don't know, doctor who. Yeah, anyway that
this is the end of the food show. Now we're
(05:45):
gonna we're gonna do a vote all of our time
to figuring out what.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They're really up to at pec A n We're onto
you there, eyes on you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No. They they are a department that has a lot
of nut related jokes, which I appreciated about them. Oh yeah,
it was one of the first things that popped up
in my Google search. Anyway, the pecan, the food, the food.
It's another droop, what droop, power.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Roop. Yeah, we tried to pick a true nut, y'all.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
We really did just this one.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But as it turns out, we just have a lot
to learn about botany. We'll go on this journey together.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Come along with us, friends, So okay. Pecans are the
seed of a fruit that grows on trees. The species
is called Karia illinois nensis. And the guy who named
it that thought that pecans were from Illinois because he
was studying trees grown from seeds that came from traders
from Illinois. He originally placed them in the walnut family. Also,
(06:48):
he wasn't entirely well informed about pecans, and he might
have been to write illino ensis instead of illinois ensis,
but made a typo. There's a lot of confusion about
this botanical name for pecans.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
But moving on.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Pecans are big old shade trees, which does not mean
that they are giving you side eye. They grow to
about seventy to one hundred feet tall that's twenty to
thirty meters and put off a lot of shade, but
be a clusters of fruits that consist of like a
fibrous husk containing a stiff, thin shell, containing in turn
a tasty seed. When the fruit is ripe, the husk
(07:22):
turns from green to yellow and peels back in four sections,
sort of like those folded paper fortune games.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh, I was so good at those. I'm making them.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I mean, there's no real way to be good to
win them unless you cheat.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Oh, not that I would do, Not that either of
us would ever have cheated.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
We should continue, Okay, Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It folds back the fruit, revealing the pecan nut, which
will be like a grayish light brown, perhaps with some
darker streaking. You crack open the shell to remove the
nut meat, which generally comes out in two halves, each
of which looks like a like a wee toasty little bread.
It does, I have thought that, And they're kind of
crunchy tender. The flavor of pecans is fatty and sweet
(08:06):
and a little roasty vanilla e buttery.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
They are a New World food native to the southern
United States and Mexico, growing especially well near the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They are the only major tree nut native to North America.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And again this is something I guess I just live
in my own little world. I didn't realize that pecans
were so specific specifically southern, in a way I did not.
The word pecan comes from a few related words, the
Algonquin word pecan, the Cree word pecan.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I'm probably mispronouncing.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Those very much, but and they mean nut that needs
a stone to crack, which led to the French word pecan,
and then pecan or pecan, however you pronounce it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The original Algonquin word could refer to other hard nuts,
like walnuts or hickory nuts. Pecans are in the hickory family,
botanists have decided. And another note about that pronunciation. Interestingly,
the native range of the pecan tree along the western
edge of the Mississippi out into Texas does pronounce the
word pecan so pecan. So we're right, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Case closed, Do not send us your letters. We will
probably still read them.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
We will be happy about it. We'll be pretty happy
about it if they're kind.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trees can live to be three
hundred years, are older, and they're known for being a
little finicky as producers.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Lots of the trees produce in alternating years, like light
crops of good nuts and then heavy crops of poor
quality nuts. You need to plant a bunch of them
together to help with pollination. And it helps to have
different varieties in the same orchard because of A that
that alternation thing, and b different types of trees will
release pollen and develop receptive flowers in times, so it
(10:01):
kind of helps. It helps pollinate all of them. If
you've got that cycle kind of ongoing for longer, right, Yeah.
If you've ever opened a pecan shell and found nothing
but dust, that nut has fallen victim to pecan scab,
which is a pretty common fungal infection that producers have
to work so hard to control. It's it's rough going
because pecan's love damp weather, but so does the fungus.
(10:25):
There are lots of varieties or cultivars of pecan trees.
The most popular these days might be the Desirable.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh wow, that's like, that's like an avatar.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
The element was named unobtainium. I wonder what that could mean.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Others.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Others include the Excel, the money Maker, the Stuart Morland,
Cape fear, Lakota, Pawnee, McMillan Sumner.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, I don't know, Ape Cape fear. Is that pecan terrifying?
I don't know. Wasn't there a horror movie.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Called it was it's not very good? Well, okay, some
people like it.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Some people like a lot of things. It doesn't mean
that it was good.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
This is true. I like a lot of horror movies
that I know. Yeah, good, perhaps mostly perhaps mostly. Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I could go into a whole thing about how I
think a movie can be good if it isn't trying
to be good.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Oh yeah, well, there's a difference between entertaining and anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
The wood of pecan trees has a pretty like striated
grain to it, like dark dark rings through paler wood.
So it's used in furniture and decorative building and woodworking, flooring, cabinets,
tool handles, stuff like that. And the wood is also
used in cooking. Chips of it can be burned both
as a fuel or for the smoke, which is sort
of medium strength on the spectrum of smoke and considered
(11:52):
good for pork, beef, and game, but probably is too
strong for stuff like chicken and fish.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Huh cool.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And the shells are used too, and stuff like particle
board and landscape mulch.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So it's got a lot of uses. Yeah, it's a
useful tree all around, it is. What about the nutrition, Well,
they've got a lot going for.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
They do, and they're high in antioxidants, so omega six
fatty acids, high in protein, phosphorus, manganese, magnesium, thiamine, and fiber.
A two thousand and one study found a daily handful
of pecans had cholesterol lowering effects. As always, bodies are complicated,
more research is needed.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Moderation is always good. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
In general, it's thought that replacing, especially replacing like sugary
or processed snacks with nuts or adding nuts to meals
as part of your protein or fat element in there,
it is a dietary positive because their combination of protein, fat,
and fiber will fill you up and keep you going.
They have a few compounds vitamins, minerals, antioxidants that do
good stuff in your body, and the types of fats
(12:57):
that they contain are the good fats that might help
your body control factors that lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
But yes, as Anny said, just like remember that they're
a nutrient in dead's food. A serving size is about
announced that's that's a handful, about twenty halves.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
So yeah, yeah, you get to snack in when you're
watching your football game or wherever it is. You can
go through a whole well okay, I'm speaking for myself.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I don't know. Oh, I can go through a lot
more than I am tien to.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I have to portion my snacks out, yeah, and only
have that much on me because otherwise.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I'll be like, oops, I guess that's gone. M So
some pecan numbers. The US produces somewhere between two hundred
and fifty million to three hundred million pounds of pecans
a year these days, and that is up from about
two point two million pounds in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Eighty percent of the world's pecans do come from the US.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They're also grown in other temperate climates, including spots in Australia, Brazil, Israel, Peru,
and South Africa and Mexico.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Of course, mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
One of the reasons pecans aren't really grown in substantial
numbers outside of the US is to this day is
because of its similarity to the walnut. If you've already
got the walnut going for you? Why I go to
the trouble to import pecons.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Because they're sweeter, they're a little bit less better than walnuts.
I think that they're a very different nut and completely worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I think you should write a book about that, and
that should be the title I will read it.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Experts from the United States are growing. Maybe they're starting
to catch on.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Maybe the cons are in all kinds of things here
in the United States. PECOMPI it's probably one of the
most well known. They're particularly big in South Yeah, our
home state of Georgia is the biggest American producer.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Again, I did not know that all those signs in Tifton.
How could I miss the signs in Tifton? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
If you go down seventy five South there as you
approach and leave Tifton, the town of Tifton, Georgia, there
are soul any billboards that are just like weird nuts
about pecans.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Okay, I'll keep an eye out for that next time.
I'm sure I've passed it. I can't believe me and
my pun brain. I can't believe I didn't say I've
got to go check this out. Apparently there is a
popular saying among Southern pecan pie bakers Southern bakers about pies,
pecan pies and pies in general, that they should be
(15:27):
quote sweet enough so that the fillings and your teeth hurt.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I disagree. Yeah, yeah, I disagree too. I like a
midsweet dessert. Yeah, can't be exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
There is a, of course, a pecan pie enthusiast and researcher,
and his name is Edgar Rose, and he has sampled
many a pecan pie and cooked many of pecan pie.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I believe he's written a book about it.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But he has a whole section on chopped pecans or
whether you should include whole ones or chopped ones pecan
pie okay, And he said he used to make them
solely with whole pecons because it is more aesthetically pleasing.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh sure, yeah, they're lovely on top of a pie.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
But he said when he discovered chopped pecans, it was
it clearly created a quote superior pie. Pecan has may
look prettier, but they don't get as crisp. And you
mustn't use chopped pecans from a package, just not fresh enough.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
In general, I always chop your own nuts.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yes, wisdom, Pecan wisdom here on savor.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Apparently Americans consume about a third of a pound of
pecans per year, and that number has held fairly steady
for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There's just a certain number of dishes you make every year,
and that's that's about pecan.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's the level of pecans you need.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
It goes up to as much as about two thirds
of a pounds per year in some years, but those
are like outliers. This research is great. Oh, there's a
lot of research out there about it. Yeah, and uh,
for for my family, and I would have seen a
lot of families.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
We use a lot of pecans around the holidays and
the sweet potato you play the stuffing and in our
in Prusia, and we do use frozen.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
My mom freezes pecans.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
She buys does she buy them like whole, like like
shell like in the shell.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
She buys them already their halves.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, And it's one of my least favorite things is
because I in fact I'm about to go do this
because as we record this Thanksgiving us tomorrow and after
this I'm leaving.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
To go prepare. But I have to get the.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Pecans out of the freezer.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And break them up.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Oh pieces, Yeah, they're so colds you could they have
food processors. Oh, my family's so cheap, including me. I'm
I'm I'm also cheap. I'm like, what could be done
about this? Here's a food processor.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
But not to that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They also make knives. I mean, I'm shure you guys
use knives.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We don't use knives. We're a no knife family.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Actually, funny story, we only use butter knives because my
mom I was so I was so clumsy as a kid.
She outlawed so, like I would have friends over and
we would have like my family used to be like,
let's have stake if you're having friends over, we use
butter knives, and my friends would be like.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
How are we? Why? And what justids forever? So okay,
there's a lot of unpactor.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I'm starting to figure out why some of your
recipes don't go as well as you want them to.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I don't know what you mean. I don't know what
it could be. Oh, we need we need like a
cooking camp.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Okay, And to be fair, pecans do come to maturation
and are harvested in general around like September October, so
that explains why they kind of became a big part of.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
A lot of these holiday dishes.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, And they do freeze pretty well
if you're going to freeze them, oh right, yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
If you're gonna hang on nuts for more than a
few weeks, freezing them is a really good option because
they're full of oils that can go rancid at room temperature.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So yeah, yeah, that happened to us one Thanksgiving. Oh oh,
nobody wants a ransom. Not no, no, no, no, no
no no.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
More Pecan wisdom and we've got more Pecan history coming
for you. But first we've got a quick break for
a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I just want to say here that there is a
whole theory out there that nuts, which Pecan's technical aren't,
But in general, this kind of thing improved the intelligence
of our ancestors because of the precision that you had to,
like coming up with a tool or way to crack
it open.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
To get to it. Well, that makes so much sense,
isn't that interesting? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yes, But we can't, as much as we would like,
just to pick apart that theory. Today we're talking specifically
about pecans, right, right, So what about pecans?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
What about them?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
They were a staple in the diets of Native Americans,
especially during the winter months. Native American tribes as far
north as Iowa and Illinois were growing pecans, and they
were easier to shell than other North American nuts, pecis
and Native Americans, perhaps the Powaton fermented them to make
an alcoholic drink called palco hicra or paco hickory, and
(20:49):
this is where the word hickory comes from. Pecans were
ground into meal sometimes and used in all kinds of things,
like as a coating for bison or with fruit. Also
used pecans to barter with and fur traders brought them
all the way to the Eastern seaboard, and this paved
the way for George Washington to become a pretty big fan.
(21:11):
He allegedly carried them in his pockets for a snack.
He is like the little He's the precursor for the
little pecan packets. Oh yeah, packets. Thomas Jefferson. Of course,
he planted them at Monticello.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And supposedly Jefferson gave some trees or some seeds to
Washington to plant at Mount Vernon.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Hm, some Archaeological evidence suggests that due to the pecan
tree sort of finicky nature that we talked about in
the in the top of the show, Native Americans might
have moved around to find pecan trees that were producing pecans,
possibly even up to one hundred and twenty kilometers or
about seventy five miles. Some estimate that the killer calorie
value of the pecan harvest could equate to about one
(21:53):
hundred and fifty thousand bison.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Oh wow, Yeah, yeah, it's pretty serious. Yeah, And I
mean it's a it's a convenient thing. It's in this.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Relatively easy to carry shell, it's self preserved, it's own
little tupperware container.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, you know. Oh, I hadn't thought of it like that,
colorically dense.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
When the French and Spanish colonists arrived to the New World,
they started cultivating their own pecans. New Orleans, a seaport
in the dead center of the pecan growing territory, became
a big player in the blossoming pecan industry by the
nineteenth century. Around this time, grafted pecan trees were a
popular option in Louisiana to grow pecans. Lenny Wells credits
(22:37):
a Louisiana and slave known only as Antoine. For some
of this, I want to say technology innovation around grafting
pecan pecan trees to more successfully grow pecans, because the
history around him is scarce. Yes, around Antoine, but he
(22:58):
is the first to figure out how to propagate pecan
trees to replicate desirable traits necessary for a successful commercial product.
This said long dogged pecan producers. Oh no, I said,
pecan Annie. Oh my gosh, do you think this is
related to basil?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
To your afraid? What have I become? You are dirt? Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Okay, yes, this had been a problem for pecan producers
along the Mississippi River. They'd plant acres of pecan trees
and get quite the range of pecans. Who knows right, taste, size,
all kinds of variables. Sure, but let's step back a
bit to the French.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Botanist and explorer Andre Michau studied wild pecans eaten by
a Native American tribe in Illinois in eighteen nineteen, and
Michell was convinced that the pecan had a bright, profitable future.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
He thought pecans would grow.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
More quickly if they were grafted onto black walnut trees
which were falsely thought to grow more quickly than pecan trees,
and this whole thing his experiment was largely a failure,
but the idea of merging two plants to improve pecan
growth did have merit. It had worked before with apples
and with peaches. Doctor Abner Landrum experimented with grafting pecans
(24:26):
in eighteen twenty two South Carolina, and it kind of worked,
but not enough to be called a true success. Which
brings us back to New Orleans and Louisiana at large,
where figuring out a viable commercial option for pecans was
a big deal. It specifically brings us to what was
once called bon Sejoor aka Oak Valley Plantation and pecan
(24:49):
lover Doctor A. E.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Colum.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
He tried and failed grafting contries, so he sought out
Oak Valley, where he'd heard there was a talented gardener there.
This talented garden was thirty eight year old slave and
swan Antoine went on to successfully graft one hundred and
twenty six trees. A lot of these trees were destroyed
post Civil War to make way for sugar cane, but
(25:13):
the new owners saved enough of them. The new owners
of the plantation saved enough of them to show off
the pecans they produced at the eighteen seventy six Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia. Antoine's trees came to be known as Centennials.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Oh Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
After the end of the Civil War, commercial pecan developers
planted some pecan varieties, marking the start of Georgia's pecan industry.
The state solidified its lead in that industry by the
nineteen fifties. The first recorded printed recipes were using pecan
started appearing in Texan cookbooks around the eighteen seventies and eighties,
(25:50):
including an eighteen ninety eight recipe for a Saint Louis
charity cookbook submitted by a Texan woman for something closely
resembling modern pecan.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And pecans we're being put in pies. Prior to that,
a recipe appeared in Harper's Bizarre in eighteen eighty six
for a custard pie with pecans added in that you
would boil and milk to soften the nuts up, and
the article said this pie is not only delicious, but
it's capable of being made a real state pie.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
I love that. I love that to this day.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
If you read the reviews on a website like allrecipes
dot com. I guarantee in the first five someone's gonna
say I won the State Fair with this pie.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yes, I love that. It makes me so happy. Just
I don't know, still going, yeah, still going.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Traditions that connect us, that's right, And this does bring
us to the pecan pie. But first it brings us
to one more quick break for word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, And okay, so the
pecan pie. Yes, first I want to give you a
quick what is it? Yeah, just in case you've never
had one or seen one, because I don't think that
I had one until I moved from the North to
South Florida, which South Florida isn't really the South, It's
more like a northern outpost. But still yeah, so pecompie
(27:21):
pecan pie is a dish that can be made in
a number of ways, but generally consists of a single
pie crust on the bottom, and that crust contains a
sort of a sort of sweet goo, a sort of
sweet molassese rich kind of like custardy, almost custardy because
it does have some butter in it, but it's not creamy.
(27:42):
It's not a it's not a cream based custard thing.
But if you could take the cream out of custard
and just imagine sort of like a jelly, yeah, sort
of molasses jelly. And then that's topped with a layer
of pecans. That usually the that top crust that forms
as you bake. It usually gets a little bit like
like crackly, crinkly chewy, and it's nutty and overly sweet
(28:10):
and rich and roasty.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
It's very good. It is.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
You can put chocolate in there, you can put bourbon
in there. We did talk about it some in our
Kentucky episodes.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
But did Yeah, it is a very popular pie around
the holidays here in the United States. And as I've
spoken about before, I believe in our Thanksgiving episode, I
make the dessert in my family, and.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's usually pie because I love pie.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
But I actually hadn't had pecan pie until I was
in college.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh wow. In my roommate when she heard about that,
oh hey, yeah, Katie, she was like, We've got to
get pecan pie now.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And we went on this whole journey to find pecan pie.
And I added pecan pie into the pie rotation one
Thanksgiving and it was one of my greatest backfire of
all time because it was great. And now that's all
anyone wants, and I want to experiment with other things.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But everyone's all like, oh wow, yeah, it's kind of
a it's one of.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Our lesser points of contention around food, but it is
a point of contention, like remember when you made it
a compie and you haven't ever made it since? Yeah,
I want to try new things. What about pumpkin pie?
I should use that as a negotiating tone.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Oh goodness, Okay, that's like the pie version of a
nuclear option.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Okay, all right, well, yes, be safe, but okay, I'll
try my best. But okay, yeah, PECMPI. If you haven't
had it, or if you haven't made it, it usually
calls for a certain type of syrup. And that's because
in nineteen oh two, which is when the Caro pecan
(29:56):
pie was, it sort of came onto this although very
low key like, and Caro is the company that makes
Caro corn syrup, and they introduced this recipe for pecan
pie to help sales of their newly widely available product.
And the recipe didn't really start to take off until
(30:16):
the nineteen twenties when it was more widely printed and
it's easier to find. And since, like you said, pecans
are largely harvested in September and in this country we
had a surplus of them around that time. Pecan pie
did join Pumpkin as a regular in the Thanksgiving the
lineup pretty soon after. Like the recipe in the nineteen twenties,
(30:37):
people like, yes, this one.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, and the corn syrup was a good addition to
the recipe because it helps stabilize that sugar base that
you're working with. M We'll have to do a whole
episode on corn syrup at some point.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It's great, Yeah, we will. But Edgar Rose so I
mentioned earlier. Oh yeah, he actually I believe he said
that the best one doesn't.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Have corn syrup.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, I hope I'm not misquoting you there. But you
can make it without corn syrup in either case.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
According to him, the first true pecan pie recipe, as
in the ingredients we typically associate with pecan pie today
and not it originally had things like raisins or coconut
things people were coupling with pecans in pieform previously. This,
like true pecan pie recipe was first printed in nineteen
twenty five's Tested Southern Recipes, and of note, nineteen twenties
(31:30):
is also when pecan processing was developed and refined, so
there were more pecans cheaper.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Sure, yeah, yeah, and yeah, you can definitely make it
without corn syrup, and certainly originally people would have been
using homemade simple syrup or something like that. But anyway, Meanwhile,
another pecan dessert had also emerged, pecan proleines.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And another fun was pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Oh it's because I just said praleeins he did. How
would you say it?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Prolleens? Ooh goodness?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Okay, these hailed However, you pronounced them from New Orleans again,
where French praline or prawling, And actually your pronunciation makes
much more sense here pral I'm sorry, say it one
more time. Prolleins, pralins, praulins prawling goodness, where French prawlin
or prawling candies had been on the scene since seventeen fifteen,
(32:24):
at least originally, these I can't do it. Originally these
preleens meant almonds coated and caramelized grained sugar back in France.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Whole episode. We could do about that.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But those almond desserts made their way to New Orleans,
or almond candies made their way to New Orleans, where
eventually the modern version with pecans coded in caramel developed
and were popularized by black women working as street vendors.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I love it, Carmel house, so much fun with pronunciation caramel.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I also love that New Orleans came up twice in
this episode about pecan It's.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
A pecan heavy, pecan heavy place it is, Yeah, and
we just visited there, yes, and yeah, maybe maybe we
should do a whole episode upcoming about crawlins and pecan pie.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh, definitely. There's so much scientific essays out there about
the pie in general of a pecan pie. Yeah, and
why it's gooey. Yeah, So for sure we could return
and and do an episode on that. And I know
that now I want I want one, but I don't
(33:43):
want to make one because then I'll get into my
family's and who wants to do that around Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Who?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
As of yesterday, there was like two thirds of a
pecan pie in the fridge at work, I know, and
I don't know whose it is.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
If it's haunting the people's pie. People should label things,
They should but apparently there's been some mislabeling happening. Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I found out about this yesterday and it spurred a
probably seven minute conversation about the labeling of things in
the fridge that was very funny and well, it was
a good humor. But I love the politics of office
fridges in general.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yes, yes, but this is our episode on pecans.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It is. It is.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
If you've got the chance and you haven't had some
good pecans.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Go find some. Yeah, yeah, if.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
There, If it's an option for you, then it's a
highly recommended thing to do. I would say absolutely, I agree,
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as you
enjoyed bringing it back, and always always let us know
(35:06):
your recipes.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
How you Yeah, I love you. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
You can email us at hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
We are also sort of kind of on social media.
You can find us on Instagram and blue Sky at
saber pod, and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks
as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
(35:39):
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lorn Vogelbaum, and today we
have a classic episode for you about pecans.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Ooh, you chose a pronunciation already.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I literally had to. I had to say the word
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
She came out fighting.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, we discussed that very thing a great deal in
this episode, which came out originally in November of twenty eighteen,
so long ago. As is common with some of these
older episodes, it was a joy to return to. But
(00:53):
also we were so bouncy and care free, like twenty eighteen,
US was just floating along.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, we were, We were well. I once again, I
think I do know the answer to this. But was
there any particular reason this was on your mind to
bring backward?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh yeah, definitely A I do love talking about culinary nuts.
They're super fascinating. Be This one is very holiday coded
here in the United States because pecans are a fall
to winter crop that get incorporated into a lot of
(01:42):
holiday dishes, a lot of desserts also, things like stuffing perhaps,
And they're just a really lovely, like warm, sweet, buttery
kind of flavor that lends themselves to that kind of application.
And so yeah, right around this year, I start just
craving pecan pie. I just go like, why am I
(02:03):
not eating that right now? Even though I didn't grow
up with it at all?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
But I didn't either, but the first time I had it,
I also thought, yeah, where have you been?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right? Where have you been? Oh? Oh my gosh. Well,
I guess we should let past Lauren and Annie take
it away.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Bouncily, Yes, hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Race
and I'm Lorn vocal Bomb. And today we're talking about pecans.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yes, pecans, because this is another episode that will include
some fun with pronunciation. Studies have found there are four
distinct pronunciations of pecan.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I say pecan.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I say pecan as well. I think where I grew
up it was pecan.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
According to this study, if you're curious, seventy percent of
Northeasterners say pecan, while forty five percent of Southerners do.
The preferred Southern pronunciation is pecan. And I know there's
a Southern I didn't write it down, but there's like
a Southern joke about pecan, a pecan being something truckers
(03:29):
used to pee in where they don't have time to stop.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Anyway, we're we're gonna say.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm gonna say pecan because that's how I grew up
saying it.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I've switched. I'm a convert, you're a convert. I'm a
pecan convert.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Pecan convert. That's fun to say. That's fun to say.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
And just a note here before we dive in, if
you haven't had fresh pecans, they are amazing. My dad's
old office used to have this big pecan tree next
to it, and they were so good if you got
to them before the squirrels did. Because those squirrels, oh yeah,
you had to fight.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You had to fight for it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
We are not the only beings that like eating pecans,
not at all.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
And I once took an acting job and what I
thought was Decatur.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Georgia, which is right next to Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That would have been a very short commute for me.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Turns out there's a Decatur, Alabama, And so for months
I commuted to Decatur, Alabama every weekend. And it's a
very small place. It's pretty, but they do have a
lot of fresh pecans. In fact, we filmed inside a
fresh pecan store like it just had fans of pecans,
(04:42):
So I'll put that in the positives column for that
whole fiasco where I should have.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It taught me an important lesson.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Always do your research and know where your job is
that you're accepting.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
That's a good, good, good tip. Thanks, Thanks Annie. It
should have been obvious, but you know, life isn't always obvious.
That's true.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
There are some things about pecaus that aren't obvious either,
which brings us to our question.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
What are they? Well? Planes?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Elevated Convection at night or PECAN is a multi department
field project studying nighttime thunderstorms in the arid regions of
the United States in order to determine.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
What I think that's that's a front and they're actually
delving into whether or not there's an alternate dimension. Oh
we like I don't know, doctor who. Yeah, anyway that
this is the end of the food show. Now we're
(05:45):
gonna we're gonna do a vote all of our time
to figuring out what.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They're really up to at pec A n We're onto
you there, eyes on you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No. They they are a department that has a lot
of nut related jokes, which I appreciated about them. Oh yeah,
it was one of the first things that popped up
in my Google search. Anyway, the pecan, the food, the food.
It's another droop, what droop, power.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Roop. Yeah, we tried to pick a true nut, y'all.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
We really did just this one.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But as it turns out, we just have a lot
to learn about botany. We'll go on this journey together.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Come along with us, friends, So okay. Pecans are the
seed of a fruit that grows on trees. The species
is called Karia illinois nensis. And the guy who named
it that thought that pecans were from Illinois because he
was studying trees grown from seeds that came from traders
from Illinois. He originally placed them in the walnut family. Also,
(06:48):
he wasn't entirely well informed about pecans, and he might
have been to write illino ensis instead of illinois ensis,
but made a typo. There's a lot of confusion about
this botanical name for pecans.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
But moving on.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Pecans are big old shade trees, which does not mean
that they are giving you side eye. They grow to
about seventy to one hundred feet tall that's twenty to
thirty meters and put off a lot of shade, but
be a clusters of fruits that consist of like a
fibrous husk containing a stiff, thin shell, containing in turn
a tasty seed. When the fruit is ripe, the husk
(07:22):
turns from green to yellow and peels back in four sections,
sort of like those folded paper fortune games.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh, I was so good at those. I'm making them.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I mean, there's no real way to be good to
win them unless you cheat.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Oh, not that I would do, Not that either of
us would ever have cheated.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
We should continue, Okay, Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It folds back the fruit, revealing the pecan nut, which
will be like a grayish light brown, perhaps with some
darker streaking. You crack open the shell to remove the
nut meat, which generally comes out in two halves, each
of which looks like a like a wee toasty little bread.
It does, I have thought that, And they're kind of
crunchy tender. The flavor of pecans is fatty and sweet
(08:06):
and a little roasty vanilla e buttery.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
They are a New World food native to the southern
United States and Mexico, growing especially well near the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They are the only major tree nut native to North America.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And again this is something I guess I just live
in my own little world. I didn't realize that pecans
were so specific specifically southern, in a way I did not.
The word pecan comes from a few related words, the
Algonquin word pecan, the Cree word pecan.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I'm probably mispronouncing.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Those very much, but and they mean nut that needs
a stone to crack, which led to the French word pecan,
and then pecan or pecan, however you pronounce it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The original Algonquin word could refer to other hard nuts,
like walnuts or hickory nuts. Pecans are in the hickory family,
botanists have decided. And another note about that pronunciation. Interestingly,
the native range of the pecan tree along the western
edge of the Mississippi out into Texas does pronounce the
word pecan so pecan. So we're right, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Case closed, Do not send us your letters. We will
probably still read them.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
We will be happy about it. We'll be pretty happy
about it if they're kind.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trees can live to be three
hundred years, are older, and they're known for being a
little finicky as producers.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Lots of the trees produce in alternating years, like light
crops of good nuts and then heavy crops of poor
quality nuts. You need to plant a bunch of them
together to help with pollination. And it helps to have
different varieties in the same orchard because of A that
that alternation thing, and b different types of trees will
release pollen and develop receptive flowers in times, so it
(10:01):
kind of helps. It helps pollinate all of them. If
you've got that cycle kind of ongoing for longer, right, Yeah.
If you've ever opened a pecan shell and found nothing
but dust, that nut has fallen victim to pecan scab,
which is a pretty common fungal infection that producers have
to work so hard to control. It's it's rough going
because pecan's love damp weather, but so does the fungus.
(10:25):
There are lots of varieties or cultivars of pecan trees.
The most popular these days might be the Desirable.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh wow, that's like, that's like an avatar.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
The element was named unobtainium. I wonder what that could mean.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Others.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Others include the Excel, the money Maker, the Stuart Morland,
Cape fear, Lakota, Pawnee, McMillan Sumner.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, I don't know, Ape Cape fear. Is that pecan terrifying?
I don't know. Wasn't there a horror movie.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Called it was it's not very good? Well, okay, some
people like it.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Some people like a lot of things. It doesn't mean
that it was good.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
This is true. I like a lot of horror movies
that I know. Yeah, good, perhaps mostly perhaps mostly. Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I could go into a whole thing about how I
think a movie can be good if it isn't trying
to be good.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Oh yeah, well, there's a difference between entertaining and anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
The wood of pecan trees has a pretty like striated
grain to it, like dark dark rings through paler wood.
So it's used in furniture and decorative building and woodworking, flooring, cabinets,
tool handles, stuff like that. And the wood is also
used in cooking. Chips of it can be burned both
as a fuel or for the smoke, which is sort
of medium strength on the spectrum of smoke and considered
(11:52):
good for pork, beef, and game, but probably is too
strong for stuff like chicken and fish.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Huh cool.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And the shells are used too, and stuff like particle
board and landscape mulch.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So it's got a lot of uses. Yeah, it's a
useful tree all around, it is. What about the nutrition, Well,
they've got a lot going for.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
They do, and they're high in antioxidants, so omega six
fatty acids, high in protein, phosphorus, manganese, magnesium, thiamine, and fiber.
A two thousand and one study found a daily handful
of pecans had cholesterol lowering effects. As always, bodies are complicated,
more research is needed.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Moderation is always good. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
In general, it's thought that replacing, especially replacing like sugary
or processed snacks with nuts or adding nuts to meals
as part of your protein or fat element in there,
it is a dietary positive because their combination of protein, fat,
and fiber will fill you up and keep you going.
They have a few compounds vitamins, minerals, antioxidants that do
good stuff in your body, and the types of fats
(12:57):
that they contain are the good fats that might help
your body control factors that lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
But yes, as Anny said, just like remember that they're
a nutrient in dead's food. A serving size is about
announced that's that's a handful, about twenty halves.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
So yeah, yeah, you get to snack in when you're
watching your football game or wherever it is. You can
go through a whole well okay, I'm speaking for myself.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I don't know. Oh, I can go through a lot
more than I am tien to.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I have to portion my snacks out, yeah, and only
have that much on me because otherwise.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I'll be like, oops, I guess that's gone. M So
some pecan numbers. The US produces somewhere between two hundred
and fifty million to three hundred million pounds of pecans
a year these days, and that is up from about
two point two million pounds in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Eighty percent of the world's pecans do come from the US.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They're also grown in other temperate climates, including spots in Australia, Brazil, Israel, Peru,
and South Africa and Mexico.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Of course, mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
One of the reasons pecans aren't really grown in substantial
numbers outside of the US is to this day is
because of its similarity to the walnut. If you've already
got the walnut going for you? Why I go to
the trouble to import pecons.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Because they're sweeter, they're a little bit less better than walnuts.
I think that they're a very different nut and completely worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I think you should write a book about that, and
that should be the title I will read it.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Experts from the United States are growing. Maybe they're starting
to catch on.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Maybe the cons are in all kinds of things here
in the United States. PECOMPI it's probably one of the
most well known. They're particularly big in South Yeah, our
home state of Georgia is the biggest American producer.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Again, I did not know that all those signs in Tifton.
How could I miss the signs in Tifton? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
If you go down seventy five South there as you
approach and leave Tifton, the town of Tifton, Georgia, there
are soul any billboards that are just like weird nuts
about pecans.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Okay, I'll keep an eye out for that next time.
I'm sure I've passed it. I can't believe me and
my pun brain. I can't believe I didn't say I've
got to go check this out. Apparently there is a
popular saying among Southern pecan pie bakers Southern bakers about pies,
pecan pies and pies in general, that they should be
(15:27):
quote sweet enough so that the fillings and your teeth hurt.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I disagree. Yeah, yeah, I disagree too. I like a
midsweet dessert. Yeah, can't be exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
There is a, of course, a pecan pie enthusiast and researcher,
and his name is Edgar Rose, and he has sampled
many a pecan pie and cooked many of pecan pie.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I believe he's written a book about it.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But he has a whole section on chopped pecans or
whether you should include whole ones or chopped ones pecan
pie okay, And he said he used to make them
solely with whole pecons because it is more aesthetically pleasing.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh sure, yeah, they're lovely on top of a pie.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
But he said when he discovered chopped pecans, it was
it clearly created a quote superior pie. Pecan has may
look prettier, but they don't get as crisp. And you
mustn't use chopped pecans from a package, just not fresh enough.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
In general, I always chop your own nuts.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yes, wisdom, Pecan wisdom here on savor.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Apparently Americans consume about a third of a pound of
pecans per year, and that number has held fairly steady
for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There's just a certain number of dishes you make every year,
and that's that's about pecan.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's the level of pecans you need.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
It goes up to as much as about two thirds
of a pounds per year in some years, but those
are like outliers. This research is great. Oh, there's a
lot of research out there about it. Yeah, and uh,
for for my family, and I would have seen a
lot of families.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
We use a lot of pecans around the holidays and
the sweet potato you play the stuffing and in our
in Prusia, and we do use frozen.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
My mom freezes pecans.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
She buys does she buy them like whole, like like
shell like in the shell.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
She buys them already their halves.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, And it's one of my least favorite things is
because I in fact I'm about to go do this
because as we record this Thanksgiving us tomorrow and after
this I'm leaving.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
To go prepare. But I have to get the.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Pecans out of the freezer.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And break them up.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Oh pieces, Yeah, they're so colds you could they have
food processors. Oh, my family's so cheap, including me. I'm
I'm I'm also cheap. I'm like, what could be done
about this? Here's a food processor.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
But not to that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They also make knives. I mean, I'm shure you guys
use knives.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We don't use knives. We're a no knife family.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Actually, funny story, we only use butter knives because my
mom I was so I was so clumsy as a kid.
She outlawed so, like I would have friends over and
we would have like my family used to be like,
let's have stake if you're having friends over, we use
butter knives, and my friends would be like.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
How are we? Why? And what justids forever? So okay,
there's a lot of unpactor.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I'm starting to figure out why some of your
recipes don't go as well as you want them to.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I don't know what you mean. I don't know what
it could be. Oh, we need we need like a
cooking camp.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Okay, And to be fair, pecans do come to maturation
and are harvested in general around like September October, so
that explains why they kind of became a big part of.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
A lot of these holiday dishes.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, And they do freeze pretty well
if you're going to freeze them, oh right, yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
If you're gonna hang on nuts for more than a
few weeks, freezing them is a really good option because
they're full of oils that can go rancid at room temperature.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So yeah, yeah, that happened to us one Thanksgiving. Oh oh,
nobody wants a ransom. Not no, no, no, no, no
no no.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
More Pecan wisdom and we've got more Pecan history coming
for you. But first we've got a quick break for
a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I just want to say here that there is a
whole theory out there that nuts, which Pecan's technical aren't,
But in general, this kind of thing improved the intelligence
of our ancestors because of the precision that you had to,
like coming up with a tool or way to crack
it open.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
To get to it. Well, that makes so much sense,
isn't that interesting? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yes, But we can't, as much as we would like,
just to pick apart that theory. Today we're talking specifically
about pecans, right, right, So what about pecans?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
What about them?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
They were a staple in the diets of Native Americans,
especially during the winter months. Native American tribes as far
north as Iowa and Illinois were growing pecans, and they
were easier to shell than other North American nuts, pecis
and Native Americans, perhaps the Powaton fermented them to make
an alcoholic drink called palco hicra or paco hickory, and
(20:49):
this is where the word hickory comes from. Pecans were
ground into meal sometimes and used in all kinds of things,
like as a coating for bison or with fruit. Also
used pecans to barter with and fur traders brought them
all the way to the Eastern seaboard, and this paved
the way for George Washington to become a pretty big fan.
(21:11):
He allegedly carried them in his pockets for a snack.
He is like the little He's the precursor for the
little pecan packets. Oh yeah, packets. Thomas Jefferson. Of course,
he planted them at Monticello.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And supposedly Jefferson gave some trees or some seeds to
Washington to plant at Mount Vernon.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Hm, some Archaeological evidence suggests that due to the pecan
tree sort of finicky nature that we talked about in
the in the top of the show, Native Americans might
have moved around to find pecan trees that were producing pecans,
possibly even up to one hundred and twenty kilometers or
about seventy five miles. Some estimate that the killer calorie
value of the pecan harvest could equate to about one
(21:53):
hundred and fifty thousand bison.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Oh wow, Yeah, yeah, it's pretty serious. Yeah, And I
mean it's a it's a convenient thing. It's in this.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Relatively easy to carry shell, it's self preserved, it's own
little tupperware container.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, you know. Oh, I hadn't thought of it like that,
colorically dense.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
When the French and Spanish colonists arrived to the New World,
they started cultivating their own pecans. New Orleans, a seaport
in the dead center of the pecan growing territory, became
a big player in the blossoming pecan industry by the
nineteenth century. Around this time, grafted pecan trees were a
popular option in Louisiana to grow pecans. Lenny Wells credits
(22:37):
a Louisiana and slave known only as Antoine. For some
of this, I want to say technology innovation around grafting
pecan pecan trees to more successfully grow pecans, because the
history around him is scarce. Yes, around Antoine, but he
(22:58):
is the first to figure out how to propagate pecan
trees to replicate desirable traits necessary for a successful commercial product.
This said long dogged pecan producers. Oh no, I said,
pecan Annie. Oh my gosh, do you think this is
related to basil?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
To your afraid? What have I become? You are dirt? Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Okay, yes, this had been a problem for pecan producers
along the Mississippi River. They'd plant acres of pecan trees
and get quite the range of pecans. Who knows right, taste, size,
all kinds of variables. Sure, but let's step back a
bit to the French.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Botanist and explorer Andre Michau studied wild pecans eaten by
a Native American tribe in Illinois in eighteen nineteen, and
Michell was convinced that the pecan had a bright, profitable future.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
He thought pecans would grow.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
More quickly if they were grafted onto black walnut trees
which were falsely thought to grow more quickly than pecan trees,
and this whole thing his experiment was largely a failure,
but the idea of merging two plants to improve pecan
growth did have merit. It had worked before with apples
and with peaches. Doctor Abner Landrum experimented with grafting pecans
(24:26):
in eighteen twenty two South Carolina, and it kind of worked,
but not enough to be called a true success. Which
brings us back to New Orleans and Louisiana at large,
where figuring out a viable commercial option for pecans was
a big deal. It specifically brings us to what was
once called bon Sejoor aka Oak Valley Plantation and pecan
(24:49):
lover Doctor A. E.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Colum.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
He tried and failed grafting contries, so he sought out
Oak Valley, where he'd heard there was a talented gardener there.
This talented garden was thirty eight year old slave and
swan Antoine went on to successfully graft one hundred and
twenty six trees. A lot of these trees were destroyed
post Civil War to make way for sugar cane, but
(25:13):
the new owners saved enough of them. The new owners
of the plantation saved enough of them to show off
the pecans they produced at the eighteen seventy six Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia. Antoine's trees came to be known as Centennials.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Oh Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
After the end of the Civil War, commercial pecan developers
planted some pecan varieties, marking the start of Georgia's pecan industry.
The state solidified its lead in that industry by the
nineteen fifties. The first recorded printed recipes were using pecan
started appearing in Texan cookbooks around the eighteen seventies and eighties,
(25:50):
including an eighteen ninety eight recipe for a Saint Louis
charity cookbook submitted by a Texan woman for something closely
resembling modern pecan.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And pecans we're being put in pies. Prior to that,
a recipe appeared in Harper's Bizarre in eighteen eighty six
for a custard pie with pecans added in that you
would boil and milk to soften the nuts up, and
the article said this pie is not only delicious, but
it's capable of being made a real state pie.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
I love that. I love that to this day.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
If you read the reviews on a website like allrecipes
dot com. I guarantee in the first five someone's gonna
say I won the State Fair with this pie.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yes, I love that. It makes me so happy. Just
I don't know, still going, yeah, still going.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Traditions that connect us, that's right, And this does bring
us to the pecan pie. But first it brings us
to one more quick break for word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, And okay, so the
pecan pie. Yes, first I want to give you a
quick what is it? Yeah, just in case you've never
had one or seen one, because I don't think that
I had one until I moved from the North to
South Florida, which South Florida isn't really the South, It's
more like a northern outpost. But still yeah, so pecompie
(27:21):
pecan pie is a dish that can be made in
a number of ways, but generally consists of a single
pie crust on the bottom, and that crust contains a
sort of a sort of sweet goo, a sort of
sweet molassese rich kind of like custardy, almost custardy because
it does have some butter in it, but it's not creamy.
(27:42):
It's not a it's not a cream based custard thing.
But if you could take the cream out of custard
and just imagine sort of like a jelly, yeah, sort
of molasses jelly. And then that's topped with a layer
of pecans. That usually the that top crust that forms
as you bake. It usually gets a little bit like
like crackly, crinkly chewy, and it's nutty and overly sweet
(28:10):
and rich and roasty.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
It's very good. It is.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
You can put chocolate in there, you can put bourbon
in there. We did talk about it some in our
Kentucky episodes.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
But did Yeah, it is a very popular pie around
the holidays here in the United States. And as I've
spoken about before, I believe in our Thanksgiving episode, I
make the dessert in my family, and.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's usually pie because I love pie.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
But I actually hadn't had pecan pie until I was
in college.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh wow. In my roommate when she heard about that,
oh hey, yeah, Katie, she was like, We've got to
get pecan pie now.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And we went on this whole journey to find pecan pie.
And I added pecan pie into the pie rotation one
Thanksgiving and it was one of my greatest backfire of
all time because it was great. And now that's all
anyone wants, and I want to experiment with other things.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But everyone's all like, oh wow, yeah, it's kind of
a it's one of.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Our lesser points of contention around food, but it is
a point of contention, like remember when you made it
a compie and you haven't ever made it since? Yeah,
I want to try new things. What about pumpkin pie?
I should use that as a negotiating tone.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Oh goodness, Okay, that's like the pie version of a
nuclear option.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Okay, all right, well, yes, be safe, but okay, I'll
try my best. But okay, yeah, PECMPI. If you haven't
had it, or if you haven't made it, it usually
calls for a certain type of syrup. And that's because
in nineteen oh two, which is when the Caro pecan
(29:56):
pie was, it sort of came onto this although very
low key like, and Caro is the company that makes
Caro corn syrup, and they introduced this recipe for pecan
pie to help sales of their newly widely available product.
And the recipe didn't really start to take off until
(30:16):
the nineteen twenties when it was more widely printed and
it's easier to find. And since, like you said, pecans
are largely harvested in September and in this country we
had a surplus of them around that time. Pecan pie
did join Pumpkin as a regular in the Thanksgiving the
lineup pretty soon after. Like the recipe in the nineteen twenties,
(30:37):
people like, yes, this one.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, and the corn syrup was a good addition to
the recipe because it helps stabilize that sugar base that
you're working with. M We'll have to do a whole
episode on corn syrup at some point.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It's great, Yeah, we will. But Edgar Rose so I
mentioned earlier. Oh yeah, he actually I believe he said
that the best one doesn't.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Have corn syrup.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, I hope I'm not misquoting you there. But you
can make it without corn syrup in either case.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
According to him, the first true pecan pie recipe, as
in the ingredients we typically associate with pecan pie today
and not it originally had things like raisins or coconut
things people were coupling with pecans in pieform previously. This,
like true pecan pie recipe was first printed in nineteen
twenty five's Tested Southern Recipes, and of note, nineteen twenties
(31:30):
is also when pecan processing was developed and refined, so
there were more pecans cheaper.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Sure, yeah, yeah, and yeah, you can definitely make it
without corn syrup, and certainly originally people would have been
using homemade simple syrup or something like that. But anyway, Meanwhile,
another pecan dessert had also emerged, pecan proleines.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And another fun was pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Oh it's because I just said praleeins he did. How
would you say it?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Prolleens? Ooh goodness?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Okay, these hailed However, you pronounced them from New Orleans again,
where French praline or prawling, And actually your pronunciation makes
much more sense here pral I'm sorry, say it one
more time. Prolleins, pralins, praulins prawling goodness, where French prawlin
or prawling candies had been on the scene since seventeen fifteen,
(32:24):
at least originally, these I can't do it. Originally these
preleens meant almonds coated and caramelized grained sugar back in France.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Whole episode. We could do about that.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But those almond desserts made their way to New Orleans,
or almond candies made their way to New Orleans, where
eventually the modern version with pecans coded in caramel developed
and were popularized by black women working as street vendors.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I love it, Carmel house, so much fun with pronunciation caramel.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I also love that New Orleans came up twice in
this episode about pecan It's.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
A pecan heavy, pecan heavy place it is, Yeah, and
we just visited there, yes, and yeah, maybe maybe we
should do a whole episode upcoming about crawlins and pecan pie.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh, definitely. There's so much scientific essays out there about
the pie in general of a pecan pie. Yeah, and
why it's gooey. Yeah, So for sure we could return
and and do an episode on that. And I know
that now I want I want one, but I don't
(33:43):
want to make one because then I'll get into my
family's and who wants to do that around Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Who?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
As of yesterday, there was like two thirds of a
pecan pie in the fridge at work, I know, and
I don't know whose it is.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
If it's haunting the people's pie. People should label things,
They should but apparently there's been some mislabeling happening. Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I found out about this yesterday and it spurred a
probably seven minute conversation about the labeling of things in
the fridge that was very funny and well, it was
a good humor. But I love the politics of office
fridges in general.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yes, yes, but this is our episode on pecans.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It is. It is.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
If you've got the chance and you haven't had some
good pecans.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Go find some. Yeah, yeah, if.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
There, If it's an option for you, then it's a
highly recommended thing to do. I would say absolutely, I agree,
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as you
enjoyed bringing it back, and always always let us know
(35:06):
your recipes.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
How you Yeah, I love you. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
You can email us at hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
We are also sort of kind of on social media.
You can find us on Instagram and blue Sky at
saber pod, and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks
as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
(35:39):
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.