By Mickey Dunaway | Reprinted by Permission | Currents Magazine | DEC 2024
It seems to be a mystery how to properly pronounce pecan. Usually in the South, it is one of three ways: puh-cann, pee-cann, or pee-cann (pronounced as in the actor James Caan). The pronunciation depends mostly on how far in the South you grew up and how the fruit of the pecan tree was pronounced by your Grandaddy.
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For consistency, in my head I will use the pronunciation in this piece that was common to my Granddaddy, which was puh-cann. Most of the pecan pies I ate growing up were baked by my Mother, a marvelous cook of everything from fried squirrels or rabbits to heavenly-inspired biscuits with butterbeans on the side. As I remember it, we had biscuits every night regardless of the main dish. This meant that I also had Blackburn’s Corn Syrup or my mama’s dewberry jelly on my biscuits. If dewberry sounds strange to you, the dewberry is a smaller version of the blackberry with fewer seeds, and the fruit is markedly sweeter which makes for better pies and jelly.
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Of desserts, my Mother was best as a pecan pie cook. However, through the years, she lost the ability to bake a pecan pie. The insides of her pies became runny instead of congealed, so she just quit baking pecan pies. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were never the same.
Some years later in my last semester at Auburn, I found what I hoped was the solution to the pecan pie dilemma. Sandy and I had married the previous December and were getting ready to move back to Mobile, Alabama for jobs after graduation. That final quarter we lived in married student housing, which had a culture of its own, and we heard through the grapevine that we should not graduate without The Auburn Cookbook.
Our neighbors swore we had to have one if our marriage was to survive long term. So, one day late in that summer quarter, I had time between classes, and I walked over to the Extension Service Office and asked the clerk at the front desk about this remarkable Auburn Cookbook I had heard about. She agreed with my neighbor and told me it was $5. I put a $5 bill on the counter, and she put a small paperback book in my hand.
As I walked back to our apartment, I scanned at the index looking for pecan pie recipes. The book had 162 pages, and the last page showed pages where recipes for Candies, Cheese, Deep Fat Frying, and Desserts could be found. But no pecan pie.
I was disappointed that pecan pies were not under Desserts. So, I stopped under a large white oak tree in the quadrangle of the women’s dorms and began seriously searching the book for pecan pies. I found the Pecan Pie recipe under the heading of Pies. Pies had their own section! Hallelujah! Christmas and Thanksgiving desserts just might be saved. Our first Thanksgiving back home I made pecan pies for our large family get-together. They were a success and approved by Mama!
Over the next fifty years or so, the recipe has proved its measure by producing outstanding pecan pies just as I remembered how Mama made them. We still have that much-worn cookbook. And I always drag it out to make sure I am going exactly by the Auburn pecan pie recipe. I have only made one change through the years—I added two tablespoons of Kentucky Bourbon to the recipe.
I have become the pecan pie maker for our immediate family. My grandchildren will have nothing else! I usually make a half-dozen pies between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. As I write this, I am now halfway there for 2024!
The Auburn Pecan Pie recipe is below.
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Courtesy of THE AUBURN UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERVICE: Auburn Cookbook – 1969
PECAN PIE
Ingredients
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 cup white Karo
- ¼ cup butter
- ¼ tsp salt
- 3 eggs beaten
- ½ tsp vanilla
- 2 tbs Maker’s Mark Bourbon (my only addition)
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 unbaked pie shell
Directions
- Combine sugar, Karo, butter, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil over low heat
- Pour over beaten eggs, stirring constantly
- Let eggs cool, add vanilla, Maker’s Mark, and pecans
- Pour into pie shell
- Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes; reduce temp to 375 degrees and bake for another 25-30 minutes.
- Take it out when the crust in browned
- Let it sit until it is cool to touch before slicing.
Family is like pecan pie—it holds all the nuts together! — Author Unknown
Southern Exposures 