Pecans are

as synonymous with Georgia as Scarlett O'Hara, and this

year's bumper crop will provide 110 to 115 million pounds

of them.

Whether

you're snacking on a handful of freshly shelled nuts, or

tossing a cup into a favorite recipe, pecans provide

taste and health benefits. They are rich in oleic acid,

the same acid found in olive oil, fiber, vitamins and

phytochemicals, which are helpful in the prevention of

some cancers.

November is

recognized as Georgia Pecan Month. The next 30 days

celebrates the annual harvest of this food crop, which

this year is double what it was in 1998. Buttery, firm

and crunchy, pecans have evolved from the 1920s when they

were sugared, spiced and enjoyed as candy (recipe page?)

to ingredients in haute cuisine. Chef David Burke of the

Park Avenue Cafe in New York and Chicago created a unique

salad of seasonal greens tossed with a pecan vinaigrette,

then garnished with goat cheese, apples and rich goat

cheese fondue. (Recipe on page ?)

Georgia

leads the nation in pecan production and for more than

150 years the state has enjoyed its reputation for

delicious nuts.

The

following is brief history of Georgia pecans compiled by

the Georgia Agricultural Commodity Commission for Pecans.

One hundred

years ago, freshly harvested Georgia pecans were savored

in much the same way they are today - toasted

and lightly salted or turned into a signature pie or

candy. But what our ancestors didn't know about pecans is

what we have discovered. Pecans fit beautifully not just

in desserts, but in main dishes, side dishes, soups and

healthy salads.

It is

believed that the first pecan trees were grown in the

tiny coastal town of St. Mary's, beside the Atlantic

Ocean. According to legend, Capt. Samuel F. Flood found

some pecans floating at sea and his wife, Rebecca,

planted them. The first pecan trees were fruitful, heavy

with nuts and subsequent trees were taken from St. Mary's

and planted in other Southeastern states.

It wasn't

until the late 1880s that the first commercial planting

of pecans was begun in southwest Georgia. Thirty years

later, developers from outside Georgia would plant pecan

orchards in the their states as well. So for the turn of

the century cook, pecans were a ready ingredient, if not

from the backyard tree, then from the local market.

According

to the Atlanta History Center, pecans were used

extensively in the cooking of the early 20th century.

During this period, most of the recipes calling for

pecans were homemade cookies and candies and had a

decidedly Creole flavor. Many contained the addition of

ground cinnamon. For example, in the 1913 cookbook

"Southern Recipes Tested by Myself" by Laura

Thornton Knowles, pecans were used in a tiny

meringue-like cookie called a Creole kiss, as well as a

whipped cream and gelatin dessert known as nutted cream.

Candy making in the home would continue well into the

1930s and 1940s as a 1949 cookbook entitled "Cooking

Way Down South" in Dixie proved. Written by A.

Monroe Aurand Jr., this book told you the proper way to

make the famous New Orleans pralines, plus something

called pecan fondant: cook sugar and water to a soft boil

stage, then add butter, vanilla, a pinch of salt and a

generous amount of chopped pecans. This is poured into a

lightly buttered dish, and when set, cut into squares.

Also in the

1930s came the invention of the legendary pecan log roll

Williamson Stuckey Sr. The family began selling pecans at

one south Georgia store, but gradually sold pecan

candies, rubber snakes, Mexican blankets and all sorts of

fun souvenirs as Stuckey's grew into an American icon.

Stuckey's locations with their teal blue roofs, were a

Florida-bound tourist haven where many American families

first tasted Georgia pecans covering that sweet and chewy

log roll.

In early

Southern cookbooks, you will also see a Depression-style

of cooking, using scarce ingredients, often without eggs

and butter. These recipes carried over into the war time

years when food rationing forced cooks to use fewer

ingredients. Such pecan recipes that reflect this

significant style of cooking include the study but

delicious pecan brown bread from legendary cook Mrs. S.R.

Dull, former food editor of The Atlanta Journal and

author of "Southern Cooking."

The bread

contains no eggs or butter, but it is moist from

buttermilk and is leavened with baking soda.

At the same

time that 1930s cooks were economizing and gobbling up

Stuckey's log rolls. Pecan growers were busy battling

something called pecan rosette, a zinc deficiency that

nearly wipes out the Georgia pecan industry. Fortunately,

a clever pathologist discovered that galvanized water

sprayers contained zinc and the trees were saved in 1932.

Pecans

remained a popular addition to pies in the 1930s mostly

combined with stiffly beaten egg whites, sugar and some

type of cracker. They went by the names of pecan meringue

or sawdust pie. But all along, an ingredient that would

become something of a culinary partner with pecans sat on

store shelves and waited until that fortuitous moment

when some cook would combine corn syrup with pecans,

eggs, a little butter and flavoring and pour this mixture

into an unbaked pie crust.

The classic

and gooey pecan pie was born in the 1940s, and it remains

a fixture on bottles of Karo corn syrup today, but it

didn't come into its own until the 1950s and 1960s when

it was a mainstay at church suppers, school picnics, bake

sales and dinner parties. It would withstand the

following years, even the gourmet 1980s with such

additions as bourbon or chocolate chips, or being baked,

not as a pie but in a sheet pan and cut into Pecan

Diamonds.

Both the

Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. and the

kitchen of the Georgia governor's mansion in Atlanta are

known for their diamond-shaped bites of pecan pie.

It was

during this pecan pie heyday that a real breakthrough in

pecan cultivation was made - mechanical harvesting.

As Darryl Sparks, a pecan historian and horticulturist

with the University of Georgia in Athens explains,

growers had, up until then, been picking up fallen pecans

temptation to buy a mechanical harvester that would shake

the pecans off the tree.

When the

California salesman came calling, this grower told the

man that he had no interest in machines because

"we've got plenty of help." The salesman

persisted until the grower allowed him to shake the trees

and that good shaking freed enough nuts still clinging to

the limbs that the grower was able to pay cash for his

very own harvester.

Sam

Pennington, whose family has been growing pecans in

Matthews, Ga. for three generations, felt the impact of

mechanical harvesting firsthand. "The day John F.

Kennedy was shot, I was a sophomore in high school and I

remember coming home and helping to pick up over 20,000

pounds of pecans from the ground - enough for two

truckloads. That was hard work." Now, with

mechanical harvesting, says Pennington, the process is

much more effective.

Mechanical

harvesting resulted not only in more nuts, but a quicker

harvest because growers didn't have to wait until the

pecans fell to the ground. To the consumer, this meant

pecans in stores before the winter holidays, just in time

for baking or gift giving.

In the

1960s, irrigation was installed throughout the orchards

and pecans were watered well in September, a crucial and

usually bone-dry period in southern Georgia, when pecans

take on shape and need water to gain flavor and size. In

addition, researchers and horticulturists such as Sparks

began working with growers to actively manage their

orchards through thinning trees in a bumper crop year,

thus assuring that the next year's harvest would also be

good. Traditionally left unattended, the pecan tree will

produce fewer nuts the year after a bumper or big

harvest.

To cooks

this meant no pecan shortages for their pies, in addition

to a savory nibble that had taken the South by storm, the

cheese straw or cheese cracker. Made with butter, sharp

cheese, flour, pecans and little ground red pepper, these

crisp buttery and nutty crackers were baked each weekend

and placed in cookie tins lined with wax paper. There has

always been a strong link between pecans and cheese

- in these cheese crackers or wafers of the 1960s,

and later in the famed cheese ring made popular by former

first lady Rosalyn Carter.

Her

husband, Jimmy Carter, was Georgia's governor in the

early 1970s, then U.S. president from 1976 to 1980. She

made a cheese ring with shredded sharp cheddar cheese,

mayonnaise, grated onion and pecans with strawberry

preserves piled in the center. The pecan encrusted cheese

ring and the sweet preserves were spread on crackers and

this appetizer was on every stylish Southern sideboard in

the 1970s.

Pecans

would also be paired with blue cheese in the 1980s,

whether on a cheese board with sliced apples and pears,

or in a delicate but powerfully flavored sauce over

chicken breasts - one of the most requested recipes

of the Georgia Department of Agriculture (see page ?).

Whereas

cooks in the 1930s were accustomed to scrimping on

expensive ingredients, the cooks of the 1980s reveled in

excess. The more cheese, the more butter, the more

flavor, the better. It's fitting, then, that in 1986 a

pecan named the Desirable rushed into our markets. It was

a favorite of the growers, and it would become a favorite

of consumers too - big pretty halves and sweet

flavor.

The strong

connection between pecans and candies in the first part

of the century gave way to pecans in main dishes and

salads in the 1990s. Pecans have also found their place

with nutty grains like wild rice, barley, quinoa and

couscous because of our current emphasis on healthy

cooking and eating. They are a natural plant food and are

also cholesterol free.

"We've

come a long way," said Buddy Leger, chairman of the

Georgia Pecan Commission, as he reflected on the past

century of growing and eating pecans. "Pecans are

not just for the holidays. People are using pecans in a

number of recipes whereas before they might have just

been making a pie.

"We

feel confident that the message is getting out that

pecans are a healthy food."