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.
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Origin
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 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.
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Cultural context
Pecan pie is often mentioned in American literature (and television) and is associated with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other special occasions; for example:
Dooley handed them a basket stuffed with fruit, nuts, candy, a tinned ham, and a pecan pie. "Merry Christmas!" he said.
The only kitchen item I usually bring to Italy is plastic wrap... This time, however, I have brought one bag of Georgia pecans and a can of cane syrup, pecan pie being a necessary ingredient of Christmas.
Pecan pie is a staple of the Southern U.S., and is often used in literary context as a symbol of the South; for example:
Variations
In his 2004 book, Ken Haedrich identified a number of popular pecan pie variants:
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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