Pecans

Appears in
Taste the State: Signature Foods of South Carolina and Their Stories
Taste the State

By Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields

Published 2021

  • About

Though most of the South now regards the pecan (Carya illinoioinensis) as a “home” nut and pecan pie as a pan-southern dessert, in reality the Native range of the pecan was limited to a rather constricted region of the Gulf coast from East Texas into Mississippi and up the Mississippi River Valley. The commercial cultivation of pecans dates from 1876 when the Centennial pecan began to be planted in groves as far east as Georgia and northwest into Oklahoma.

Barrels of pecans first appear in advertisements in the Charleston newspapers in 1832. With each subsequent year, the quantity being imported increased. They came from Texas where people foraged the wild trees, cured the nuts, and shipped them in barrels out of Galveston or New Orleans to ports on the East Coast and Europe. In Charleston it stood second among the exotic imported nuts that merchants advertised: almonds, pecans, Brazil nuts, English Walnuts, filberts (hazelnuts), and butternuts.