Pecans, the only major nut native to the United States, have a rich history in the country. Today, American trees produce hundreds of millions of pounds of pecans, 80% of the world’s pecan crop. Most of that harvest stays here. Pecans are used to produce pecan milk, butter and oil, but many of the nuts end up in pecan pies.
Throughout history, pecans were ignored, poached, cultivated and improved. As it spread across the United States, they were consumed raw and in recipes. Pecans have become more popular over the decades, and you’ll probably find them in some form this holiday season.
I am an extension specialist in Oklahoma, a state that consistently ranks fifth in pecan production, behind Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. I admit I’m not a fan of the flavor of pecans, which leaves more for squirrels, crows, and enthusiastic nut lovers.
The expansion of pecans
The pecan is a nut related to the American walnut. In fact, although we call them walnuts, pecans are actually a type of fruit called a drupe. Drupes have pits, like peach and cherry.
Pecan nuts, which look like small brown balls, are actually the seed that starts inside the nut fruit, until the fruit ripens and splits to release the nut. They are usually the size of your thumb, and you may need a nutcracker to open them. You can eat them raw or as part of a cooked dish.
The pecan takes its name from the Algonquin “pakani,” which means “a nut too difficult to crack by hand.” Rich in fat and easy to transport, pecans traveled with Native Americans throughout what is now the southern United States. They were used for food, medicine and trade for just 8,000 years.
These nuts are native to the southern United States and, although they had previously spread along travel and trade routes, the first documented and intentional planting of a pecan tree was in New York in 1722. Three years later, George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, had some pecans planted. Washington loved pecans, and Revolutionary War soldiers said he ate them constantly.
Meanwhile, no one needed to plant walnuts in the south, as they grew naturally along river banks and in orchards. Walnut trees have alternating production: they will have a very large crop one year, followed by one or two very small crops. But because they produced a crop naturally without input from farmers, people did not need to actively cultivate them. The locals harvested nuts for themselves, but otherwise ignored the self-sufficient trees.
It was not until the late 19th century that people in the pecan’s natural range realized the nut’s potential for income and trade. Pecan harvesting became competitive, and small children climbed precarious tree branches. One girl was lifted up in a hot air balloon to hit the upper branches of the trees and drop them to the pickers below. Pecan poaching was a problem in natural forests on private property.
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Pecan cultivation begins
Even with such evident demand, cultivated orchards in the South remained rare until the 20th century. Walnuts do not produce nuts for several years after planting, so their future quality is unknown.
To ensure the quality of the nuts, farmers began to use a technique called grafting; They attached branches from quality trees to the trunk of another pecan tree. The first attempt to graft pecans was in 1822, but the attempts were not very successful.
Walnut grafting became popular after an enslaved man named Antoine, living on a Louisiana plantation, successfully produced large pecan nuts with delicate shells by grafting, around 1846. His pecans became the first improved variety of pecan nut widely available.
The variety was called Centennial because it was introduced to the public 30 years later on the Philadelphia Centennial Expedition in 1876, along with the telephone, Heinz ketchup, and the right arm of the Statue of Liberty.
This technique also sped up the production process. To maintain the quality of the pecans and produce consistent annual harvests, today’s growers shake the trees as the nuts continue to grow, until about half of the pecans fall off. This reduces the number of nuts so the tree can invest more energy into fewer nuts, leading to better quality. Shaking also evens out performance, so the reciprocating bearing feature doesn’t create a boom and bust cycle.
Walnut consumption in the US
The French brought praline dessert when they emigrated to Louisiana in the early 18th century. A praline is a flat, creamy candy made with nuts, sugar, butter and cream. Their original recipe used almonds, but at the time, the only nut available in America was the pecan, so pecan pralines were born.
During the Civil War and World Wars, Americans consumed large quantities of these nuts because they were a protein-rich alternative when meat was expensive and scarce. One ounce of pecans has the same amount of protein as 2 ounces of meat.
After the wars, demand for pecans decreased, resulting in millions of pounds of excess harvest. One effort to increase demand was a national pecan recipe contest in 1924. More than 21,000 entries came from more than 5,000 cooks, of which 800 were published in a book.
Pecan consumption increased with the inclusion of nuts in commercially prepared foods and the start of the mail order industry in the 1870s, as nuts could be shipped and stored at room temperature. That characteristic also led them to participate in some Apollo missions. Small amounts of pecans contain many vitamins and minerals. They became common in cereals, which touted their health benefits.
In 1938, the federal government published the pamphlet Nuts and How to Use Them, which highlighted the nutritional value of pecans and came with recipes. Food writers suggested using pecans as butter because they are composed primarily of fat.
The government even put a price ceiling on pecans to encourage consumption, but consumers didn’t buy them. The government ended up purchasing the surplus pecans and integrating them into the National School Lunch Program.
While you’re sitting around the Thanksgiving table this year, you can talk about one of the biggest controversies in the pecan industry: Are they pee-cans or puh-KAHNS?
*Shelley Mitchell is a senior Extension specialist in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Oklahoma State University.
This article was originally published on The Conversation/Reuters
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