Pecan Pie · Pie Gets Me Out of Bed

Pecan pie is a single-crust pie of pecans set in a filling of eggs, sugar, butter and syrup. It appears in print by 1886 and took its modern corn-syrup form around 1930 through Karo advertising. Texas named it the state pie in 2013, and Oklahoma includes it in its official state meal.

The modern pie is a filling of eggs, sugar, melted butter, vanilla and corn syrup, light or dark, poured over pecans in an unbaked crust and baked until just set. Recipes differ in the ratio of sugar to syrup and in whether the nuts are whole or chopped.

The earliest records date from 1886. Texas Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 cites the humor magazine Texas Siftings, which in February 1886 called the pie capable of being made into a “real state pie.” Wikipedia cites a pecan custard pie recipe in Harper’s Bazaar the same year. In March 1914 the Christian Science Monitor printed a “Texas Pecan Pie” with a custard of sweet milk, sugar, eggs, flour and chopped pecans. Older recipes used darker sugar syrups or molasses.

The syrup pie known today dates to about 1930. The Texas resolution credits the wife of a Karo Syrup Company executive with combining the syrup and pecans, after which advertising tied the two together in the public mind. Wikipedia notes that the company has called the pie a 1930s discovery. The resolution says recipes began appearing in The Joy of Cooking and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook in the 1940s, and Wikipedia notes that neither book included the pie before 1940.

Texas designated pecan pie the official State Pie by Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of the 83rd Legislature, adopted by the Senate on March 13, 2013, and the House on May 17, 2013. The pecan tree has been the Texas state tree since 1919. Oklahoma’s official state meal, set by the 41st Legislature in 1988, ends with pecan pie; the resolution is numbered House Concurrent Resolution 1083 by Mental Floss and 1983 by Wikipedia.

Georgia and New Mexico lead the country in pecans. In NASS figures, Georgia produced the largest crop in 2021 and 2022, 131 million pounds in 2022, and New Mexico the largest in 2023, at 100 million pounds to Georgia’s 88.3 million. Texas, at 24 million pounds in 2023, and Oklahoma, at 13.65 million, are assigned by their legislative designations. Georgia and New Mexico are assigned as the leading producers. Arizona, the third-largest producer in 2023 at 45.5 million pounds, has no sourced tie to the pie and remains unassigned.

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