Here's To The All-American Pecan!
Perfected From Domesticated Trees By A Slave in Louisiana in 1845
“Just be careful how you say ‘no peservatives’ in French”
Talk about boring! Watching a pecan tree produce its first crop of nuts can take 12 to 14 years. So you don’t want to plant one if you’re in a hurry to make pralines. And even if you planted one you’d still be out of luck unless you planted two. Optimally It takes two pecan trees in close proximity in order for either to produce good harvests of nuts. It’s the only domestic food crop I can think of that takes that long to produce its first harvest.
The long-familiar saying “as American as apple pie” is actually a misnomer since the origin of all apple trees is Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. The origin of all pecan trees is the southern part of the United States so if you really wanted to be accurate with that pie phrase you’d say “as American as pecan pie.”
Pecans have been part of the diet of Native American peoples for thousands of years and remain one of the most popular tree nuts in the world. Today, 80% of the world’s pecans are harvested in America. French people in New Orleans are credited with making the first pecan pies but, no, as far as I recall that distinction belongs to my mother who was an Alabamian. But don’t quote me.
For 21 years, Ed Seiwell and I were partners in a pie manufacturing company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and for five of those years our pies were the only ones served aboard Air Force One.
Our pecan pie was also the only one of its kind sold in France. They became popular across much of that country, where we personally represented them at SIAL, the world’s largest week-long food exhibition, near Paris.
This was not without hazard, however. We hired an American translator-friend to translate “no preservatives” on our brochure. He dutifully entered that phrase in what he thought was French as “sans preservatifs”, which you may be relieved to discover means “no condoms” in actual French. No doubt the reason our French food show visitors were chuckling while reading our brochures was finding out that our pies contained no condoms. (“Sacre bleu! what is wrong with these Americaines?”)
Pecan wood is highly desirable in the manufacture of furniture and can add beauty and interest to tables, countertops, furniture and flooring. It is one of the toughest and hardest woods native to America.
Grafted to Perfection by Antoine
Historically, pecan trees were notoriously uncooperative about producing nuts of consistent quality. You could plant 1,000 nuts from a single tree and get no two trees exactly alike. But sometime around 1845, a slave by the name of Antoine figured out how to produce successive generations of trees with predicable high quality. Antoine was a gifted plant specialist at the Oak Alley Plantation not far from New Orleans.
Sadly, although Antoine was a respected master gardener employed on the property, we know nothing else about him except his age when he made his discovery. He was 38. Records at the time show that Antoine grafted 126 trees at Oak Alley. Years later, at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition nuts from Antoine’s trees were displayed alongside Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and the brand new condiment, Heinz Ketchup. Antoine’s pecan got top honors and was named the “Centennial”.
Think about that! A man raised as a slave developed a product so desired and successful that at the first World’s Fair it stood shoulder to shoulder with the invention of the telephone and the world’s most famous condiment!
That pecan is acknowledged as the world’s first officially established (and named) pecan variety. Before then it was “pot luck” at best. So hats off to Antoine!
Pecans, by the way, are far richer in vitamins A, E and B1 than any other nut, including walnuts.
George Washington planted pecans at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson did the same at his Monticello home. It was Jefferson, in fact, who gave Washington his first fledgling trees. Washington is known to have carried in-shell pecans in his coat pocket for snacks.
In 1787, while serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson planted a pecan tree on the Bordeaux estate of Chateau Carbonnieux. This 235-year old tree was felled by high winds in a storm in September, 2022. The picture below reveals the damage.
Translation: “This pecan, American nut tree was planted May 25, 1787, by Thomas Jefferson during his visit to Bordeaux. It is the oldest of its kind present in European soil.”
Pecans are good all year long thanks to refrigeration but if you want the best, buy them in November or December, when the “new crop” is harvested each year. You can find new crop pecans online easily enough or simply look for them in your supermarket starting in November. My company was sold a few years back but that won’t stop me from making at least one pecan pie before the holidays this year.
Our company bought pecans for all those years from Orangeburg Pecan Co. in South Carolina. You can order them there in bulk or in gift packs.
Here you go:
https://uspecans.com/
You Can Do This
16-ounce bottle white Karo syrup heated to almost boiling
1.5 cups white sugar (dissolved in the syrup)
1 stick unsalted butter whisked in
5 large eggs beaten then whisked in
¼ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla (pure vanilla is best if you can get it)
2 cups pecans, CHOPPED (don’t use whole pecan halves)
1 deep dish frozen pie shell thawed to room temperature (be sure that your pie shell has no cracks or the liquid will seep through and burn the bottom)
Pour this mixture into the pie shell and bake at 325 for 65 minutes. Good pecan pie requires a long oven time at a low heat setting in order to properly caramelize the filling. Allow the pie to cool to room temperature before cutting. (Pecan pie is actually better chilled and served right from the refrigerator).
Be warned: Heating a slice of pecan pie ruins the flavor! I’m not kidding!
The next time you’re in a jet airliner take a look out the window at the engines and know that the blades of those engines are polished by a fine powder made from pecan shell residue. Thanks to native American pecan trees, you are kept safely airborne!
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Bob