I had just started my first year of high school when my grandmother taught me how to make a pecan pie. It was a sleepy Thanksgiving Eve in Evergreen, and Grandmama’s house was as good a place as any to idle away an afternoon. She was rummaging for ingredients in her pantry when I walked into her kitchen without knocking. She never locked the door — there wasn’t any need to in a town of our size. She was making the pecan pie my aunt asked her to bring to Thanksgiving every year even though it was always eclipsed by the other desserts my relatives baked. Our family might have been the only one in the country that used pecan pie as a decoration, but it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it, and Grandmama couldn’t complain about having a little leftover dessert at her house.
I think she would have clutched her pearls if she hadn’t taken them off to bake when I told her I’d never made pecan pie before. She told me every Southern woman needed to be able to make one, and that she was going to teach me how. We split our duties unevenly, my assignments mostly involving stirring and listening to her advice. I watched her cut butter into flour, roll dough into a thin sheet and splash what might have been two tablespoons of bourbon into the filling straight from the bottle, and I whisked pecans into corn syrup while she told me about the importance of blind baking pie crust and soliciting cooking advice from church ladies. I felt an unearned sense of pride when we finally pulled our masterpiece out of the oven. Even if it was only going to be used as a party decoration, it was a pretty good one.
My family’s ornamental use of pecan pie says something about its ubiquity at Southern Thanksgivings. A table feels undressed without one. It’s almost improper to leave it off the menu considering the wealth of pecan orchards that pepper lower Alabama’s countryside. Before pecans were cultivated en masse for modern desserts, the indigenous people of North America used the “nuts requiring a stone to crack” as a food staple for the winter months. The orchards came much later, some of which were planted by families a little over a century ago. Mobile and Baldwin counties grow the most commercially-harvested pecans in the state, a remarkable feat given the damage hurricanes have dealt to the orchards over the years. Still, beyond the industry, there’s something simple and nostalgic about walking through rows of pecan trees. Their abundance has made it a familiar memory for many Southerners to have ambled beneath a pecan-wood arbor on a fall afternoon, kicking fallen husks with the toes of their boots as they walk.
The origins of Southerners’ love of pecan pie doesn’t lie in easy access to its eponymous ingredient. It might not even be as cherished as it is if not for its role in a historical act of rebellion. In the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in an attempt to unify a broken country. The Confederacy saw this olive branch as an abolitionary dagger aimed at traditional Southern values, culture and commerce upheld by slavery. Southerners rejected the holiday and its message of national reconciliation even after the war ended, many states refusing to recognize the holiday at all.
Later displays of rebellion were less overt. Some governors, unable to ignore the holiday entirely, would move their state’s Thanksgiving date to another week in defiance of reconciliation. Southern citizens contributed to the fight in the kitchen by refusing to serve the food of their enemies at the Thanksgiving table. Instead of making the Yankees’ customary pumpkin pie for dessert, they baked pecan pies using a quintessentially Southern ingredient. Even though the tradition was born from an act of begrudging compliance, it stuck like treacly custard to a pie plate. Cooks eventually elevated the holiday treat by adding indulgent ingredients like chocolate and bourbon and making tarts and deep-dish versions of the original form, creating countless variations of the dessert. We don’t think of pecan pie as a rebellious food now, but we’re grateful for a custom that gives us opportunities to gather with loved ones around a table, celebrate a local natural bounty and create memories in our grandmothers’ kitchens.
Grandmama told me that everyone’s secret family recipe was on the back of a bottle of Karo corn syrup. I’m sure the church ladies who helped me learn how to cook after her passing would have something to say about that claim. There is, however, some truth to it. Some of the earliest pecan pie recipes were printed in church cookbooks in the late 1800s, but it wasn’t until Karo Syrup printed a pecan pie recipe on the label in the 1920s that the dessert became the sensation that it is today. The pantry staple introduced the pie to the unacquainted masses, and its simplicity made it a low-stakes project for curious bakers. It wouldn’t be a stretch to believe Karo is responsible for at least a few of those classified heirloom recipes. I wouldn’t dare diminish my grandmother’s baking legacy, but I suspect hers might be of the same lineage. Still, I’m happy to have it.
The Thanksgiving I learned to make pecan pie was, as far as I can remember, the first it didn’t go untouched — mostly because I was proud enough of our work to plop a slice on anyone’s plate that passed by it. Maybe it was just a pecan pie, but it’s more than just a dessert in the South. It’s a little slice of home, heritage and family. Now, thanks to Grandmama, it’s become a part of ours as well.
Pecan Pie
Makes 1 8-inch pie
Crust:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup vegetable shortening, chilled
1/2 cup ice water
Filling:
3 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups dark corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons bourbon
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 cups pecans
1/3 cup milk chocolate, finely chopped
For the crust:
1. Grate 6 tablespoons unsalted butter and place in freezer for 15 minutes. Whisk all-purpose flour and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Add grated butter and chilled vegetable shortening to the bowl. Using a fork or pastry cutter, cut the fats into the flour until well combined and the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Add ice water a spoonful at a time and mix until the dough just holds together. Do not overmix. Not all the water may be necessary.
4. Shape the dough into a disk and cover in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for two hours or freeze for 30 minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Flour a flat surface and roll the dough outward into a sheet. Place the sheet into a pie dish, line the dough with parchment and pour pie weighs or dried beans in the dish. Crimp and then trim the edges of the pie. Bake the crust for 20-25 minutes.
For the filling:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk eggs in a large bowl. Add granulated sugar, brown sugar, flour, corn syrup, salt, vanilla, bourbon and melted butter and mix well. Fold in pecan halves and chocolate.
3. Pour filling into the pie crust and bake one hour and 15 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 200 degrees. Place aluminum foil on the edges during baking if they begin to darken.
4. Allow to cool completely and store in refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before serving.
