It's Thanksgiving! So I thought I'd do another deep dive into a little cookbook I got years ago (here's the last one). This time I thought I'd tackle one of my favorite pies - pecan pie - by my favorite First Lady - Eleanor Roosevelt.

Pecan pie is a perennial Thanksgiving favorite, but it is actually a very recent addition, dating back only to the late 19th century at the earliest. But it was popularized in the early 20th century, thanks in part, perhaps, to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt was not famed for her cooking prowess, or her palate. About a decade ago I toured Val Kill Cottage in Hyde Park, NY - Eleanor Roosevelt's private refuge away from her mother-in-law. Unfortunately the tour guide I had was an older gentleman with a folksy air and a rather misogynistic take on Eleanor - he gleefully recounted her inability to cook anything other than scrambled eggs and toast, and her obsession with denying poor Franklin the foods he loved. 

Franklin and Eleanor's opposing ideas about food represented the two warring food trends of the 1930s - between epicures concerned about disappearing regional foodways, and home economists bent on providing nutritious and low-cost meals in the face of the Great Depression. Franklin was an epicure who wanted to eat well and expensively - filet mignon, salmon, caviar. After attending boarding school in London, Eleanor had worked in a settlement house in New York City - she had been educated as many wealthy young women at the time, but after much tragic loss in her childhood, she was determined to chart a different course than the brainless society debutant so familiar at the time. Although she taught dance and calisthenics at the settlement house - not nutrition - she likely absorbed some of the ideas about nutrition and home economics from that experience. 

The New Yorker did an excellent article several years ago on these competing trends of the 1930s. Unfortunately for Franklin's refined appetites, Eleanor and the home economists won. The USDA founded the Department of Home Economics in 1923 (likely inspired by the development of Home Bureaus to answer to Farm Bureaus in World War I). And when the Great Depression hit, Eleanor didn't want the White House to maintain a slate of menus more reflective of the Gilded Age opulence than the financial reality of most Americans. Her menus balanced nutrition and price - but flavor was low on the priority list. White House head cook Henrietta Nesbitt agreed, and made famously bad meals. The White House was no longer a place to enjoy good cooking at political banquets. Instead, it reflected the worst of home economists' opinions on food, taste, and morality. 

Eleanor's notorious lack of interest in food is why I was surprised to see this recipe in the above cookbook, Hollis Pantry Secrets, published in 1946 in Hollis, a community in Queens, NY. Of course, there were a number of famous people in the cookbook, including Elizabeth Trump. But Eleanor didn't have much of a connection to Queens. She grew up visiting her grandmother in Tivoli, NY (far north on the Hudson River), her uncle Theodore Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, NY (way out on Long Island), and then her husband's family home in Hyde Park, NY. Did she know someone who was organizing the cookbook? Or was her submission the same she sent to community cookbooks around the country? 

​Let's take a look at the recipe:

3 eggs.
1 cup brown sugar.
1 tbsp butter.
1 cup corn syrup.
1 cup pecans. 
1 tsp. vanilla.
a few grains of salt.

Cream butter and sugar and add syrup, well-beaten eggs, salt, and vanilla. When mixed add the finely chopped pecans and turn into a pie-plate lined with pastry. 

Bake in a modern oven until firm.

Walnuts may be substituted.

The recipe itself is simple and the prose spare and uncomplicated - reflective of Eleanor's personality and beliefs. 

It was not uncommon for first ladies of all levels, from Governor on up, to have a special recipe to share with constituents when asked. In fact, this cookbook also includes a recipe from Mrs. Thomas E. Dewey (wife of New York governor Thomas Dewey) for soybean cookies - far less palatable than pecan pie, that's for sure! It strikes me that this recipe was likely was the one Eleanor used at home. But why pecan pie? 

A friend of mine is a historian who specialized in Eleanor Roosevelt history when she worked for the National Park Service. Her theory is that all the time the Roosevelts spent in Warm Springs, Georgia may have influenced Eleanor's decision to use a pecan pie recipe rather than a more typically New York recipe that reflected her Dutch origins. 

The history of pecan pie is a bit murky. Some sources claim it dates back to the French colonial days of Louisiana. Pecans are native to the lower Mississippi River valley (including Louisiana), eastern Texas, and northern Mexico. But they did not come into commercial cultivation in the United States until the 1880s. Although pecans show up in cookbooks and magazines as part of the nut course for fancy dinners throughout the 19th century, they are used in very few published recipes prior to the 1890s. Pecan meal shows up in a pie crust recipe from the John Harvey & Ella Kellogg's Health Reformer magazine in 1894, but the Kelloggs routinely used nuts as meat and grain substitutes. While popular, their recipes weren't exactly standard household fare.

The earliest known recipe for "pecan pie" comes from Harper's Bazaar in 1886, which calls for the pecans to be cooked in milk and then added to a "rich custard" baked in a pie crust. Not quite the same as our modern incarnation. Sarah Tyson Rorer's column in the July, 1898 issue of The Ladies Home Journal includes a recipe for "Texas Pecan Pie" from Mrs. M. B. which sounds very familiar, except for the addition of an egg white meringue on top! The meringue persists on top of pecan pie; the 1901 Twentieth-Century Cook Book says to bake it in a "rich paste" (a.k.a. pie crust) like a custard. The October, 1910 issue of Good Housekeeping also calls for pecan pie with meringue. The San Francisco Bulletin's cookbook, published in 1917, also calls for meringue in a recipe submitted by Mrs. H. J. Warner. The June 3, 1915 issue of The Wisconsin Agriculturalist includes a recipe for a strange mashup between pecan pie and lemon meringue pie - calling for just a half a cup of pecan nutmeats and the juice of one lemon in addition to the egg white meringue. Notes on the Early History of the Pecan in America, published in 1919 by USDA scientist Rodney True, includes a whole section on pecan recipes furnished by the president of the Texas Pecan Growers' Association, including the now-familiar recipe with meringue, but also a molasses-based pecan pie recipe which seems much closer to the corn syrup modern version we're familiar with today. 

Pecan pie remained fairly rare, however, as in 1924 even the National Pecan Exchange News expressed disbelief. Their Domestic Science Department wrote:

"Who ever heard of making pie out of nuts?" This is what we said when we saw a recipe in the Country Gentleman a recipe contributed by Mrs. Bessie Underwood, Denton, Texas for pecan pie. The novelty of the thing appealed to our appetite; and, having resolved not to risk another recipe on our readers without having either Miss A. B. Degree's stamp of approval or having tried it ourselves, we left an order with our chef to have one done according to the recipe appended below. We have passed through all the stages of boyhood's favoritism for green apple pie, gooseberry pie, blueberry pie, mince pie, cherry pie, and had reached man's estate with a settled preference for lemon pie. We claim we know a good pie when we set our remaining teeth in one. The Pecan pie was the surprise of our life. Mother was a cook unexcelled, but, verily, mother never made anything like this. Try it. 

The recipe included calls for a scant 1/2 cup of pecans and meringue. 

The earliest recipes for pecan pie using corn syrup arrive in the 1920s. One comes from Marian Cole Fisher's Handbook of Cookery, published in 1927. Like its earlier molasses-based ancestors, this recipe does NOT call for meringue. Another earlier recipe, from 1925's 800 Proved Pecan Recipes, is titled "Molasses Pie," but then goes on to describe a pecan pie made with Karo (corn) syrup - nary a drop of molasses in sight. 

​Corn syrup production dates to the late 19th century, and in 1902 Karo syrup was introduced, in a variety of flavors. Created by the Corn Products Refining Company (along with Mazola corn oil and Argo corn starch), Karo became popular enough that the brand name came to mean "corn syrup" in many households. There were three types - blue label, which was dark and caramelly; green label, which was maple-flavored, and red label, which was light-colored and often flavored with vanilla. Eventually the green label was dropped and dark and light corn syrup began to be referred to without the label color, although Karo brand still uses those colors today.

Initially, Karo syrup was marketed primarily as a substitute for maple syrup, and advertisements usually showed it being used on pancakes and waffles. The primary recipe of the early 20th century that featured Karo syrup was divinity fudge. Company lore indicates that pecan pie made with Karo syrup was invented by a company executive's wife in 1931. But as we've seen, Karo syrup was used in pecan pie as early as 1925. And I found this 1928 newspaper article from Nowata Oklahoma, which has a recipe for "Karo Pecan Pie" shared by a cooking school instructor as a "variation on custard pie." In January, 1931, Mrs. A. U. Given got her "Karo Pecan Pie" recipe printed in the Elizabethton, Tennessee newspaper. In February & March, 1931, Mrs. Frank Herring's "Karo Pecan Pie" was shared as a "Favorite Recipe" in newspapers throughout Oklahoma and Mississippi. By 1931-32, there were "Karo Pecan Pie" categories in county fairs, in reports of committee meetings, and even on restaurant menus. A 1931 pie contest in Shawnee, Oklahoma contained a number of pecan pie entries (with recipes!), and multiple nut pie recipes, not all of which called for Karo syrup, although the second-place winner was a pecan pie that used karo syrup. It was clear, however, that "Karo pecan pie" was becoming increasingly popular, alongside un-branded pecan and other nut pies. ​

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 (although modern medical experts now think it may have been Guillain-Barré syndrome). In 1924, he visited Warm Springs, Georgia, hoping that the natural springs there might help cure his paralysis. The waters offered no permanent cure, but the buoyancy allowed him to stand for the first time, and the warmth and a regimen of swimming soon increased his strength, especially in his legs. A nationally syndicated article featuring him and his health struggles soon brought polio patients from around the country to Warm Springs in hopes of a cure. Franklin returned every year from 1924 on (except for 1942, when he was dealing with WWII). In 1932, while still governor of New York, he and Eleanor built a cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia that later became known as "The Little White House." 

The interactions the Roosevelts had in Warm Springs, GA influenced their public lives and public policy. In 1936, FDR commissioned the Eleanor Roosevelt School in Warm Springs, with funding from the Rosenwald Fund, which built quality schools for African American children in the rural south. It was last Rosenwald school to be built.

Warm Springs was known for its hot springs more than anything else, but it was in the middle of pecan grove country, and is likely where the Roosevelts first encountered pecan pie, especially since they often celebrated Thanksgiving there.

On November 29, 1930, shortly after Thanksgiving, the residents of Warm Springs treated FDR to a possum hunt and dinner. The dinner included pecan pie, and both Franklin and Eleanor were present.

Eleanor spent less time in Warm Springs than Franklin, but she was there for Thanksgiving in 1938 and again in 1939, as she recounted in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, "My Day."

November 23, 1939 - WARM SPRINGS, Ga., Thursday—Here we are in Georgia celebrating Thanksgiving Day, but I do not know how many of my readers will be celebrating it on this same day! Just for my own satisfaction I am going to put down some of the things for which I am grateful, and for which I will willingly be thankful on both the 23rd and the 30th if necessary.

I am thankful that I live in a democracy and that it is in the United States of America. I am thankful we are not at war. I am thankful that more of our citizens are thinking about their government today and are realizing their obligations to that government.

I am thankful that I can think as I please, and write as I please and act as I please, within certain limits which guard these same liberties for other citizens. I am thankful that in this country, courage can still dominate fear. I am thankful for the answering smile of the passer-by, and the laughter of children in our streets.

Even here in Warm Springs, where many people are facing handicaps which must give them moments of stark terror when they are alone, they can still manage to meet the world with a smile and give one the feeling of a marching army with banners flying.

Do you remember my mentioning a manuscript written by a blind woman who learned to live alone? Now I have been asked to go to see her. The book had so much courage in it that even though I am half afraid of shattering an illusion, I think I will take a chance and go. We always picture to ourselves what kind of person it is who has written something we like, and are a little afraid we may not like the real person as well. Yet I may find a new friend, which is always a delightful experience.

It is a curious sensation to be putting on summer clothes again and adding a few days to a season you felt was over for another year. At this season down here there is always a tang and a sharpness in the air of the Georgia hills, in spite of soft breezes and warm sunshine, and walks in the woods are a never ending joy.

There are two swimming pools here, one in which the patients take their exercise, the other in which they play. If ever you feel creeping over you a sense of impatience with the work you have to do, which may be somewhat monotonous and slow in showing results, just come down here and stand around the exercise pool for a while, then go out to see a light-hearted game of ball after the work is over. Day in and day out for months, perhaps for years, this exercise work must go on. If watching this does nothing more for you, it will make you feel you should never be sorry for yourself.

Whichever day you celebrate Thanksgiving, my wish for you is that you may have something to be thankful for no matter how dark your clouds may be, and above all may hope and faith in the future always be with you.

E. R.

The following day, on November 24, 1939, Eleanor recounted actual Thanksgiving, but with no mention of her own Thanksgiving dinner, or whether or not they had pecan pie:

November 24, 1939 - Thanksgiving Day in WARM SPRINGS, Ga.—A blue sky overhead, a warm sun, and yet enough chill in the air to make a brisk walk pleasant. In the evening, a great log fire on the hearth gives added cheer. We are alone for lunch, but tonight we will eat our turkey with the patients and guests in Georgia Hall.

Many messages have come to us this day which warm the heart. I feel each day an increasing gratitude that I am a citizen of the United States at peace and free.

I have just received a little bulletin published by the Washington Electric Cooperative of East Montpelier, Vermont. The bulletin is only two months old, but I predict it will appeal to its circulation. There is a poem glorifying electric lights for rural areas and a practical New England item on a nearby page, which says: "Under the Rural Electrification Administration, lines are being built at a new cost of about $810.00 a mile. Before Rural Electrification Administration days, $1,500 was considered low."

The question and answer department in this little bulletin amused me, particularly the answer to the question: "If I should want to do something to my wire, is it all right if I put a ladder on the pole and turn off the transformer?" The answer ran: "It is a convenient way out. In order to save trouble for your family we suggest that you make the funeral arrangements first and leave a note for the police so that they will not think it was murder."

I think we all enjoy keeping in touch with the human side of the REA movement. Like all other things which the Department of Agriculture has a hand in these days, there is a conservation side to rural electrification which affects the lives of human beings. Men and women can get more joy and ease out of life when they have electricity to work for them on the farms.

One farm wife in Knox County, Ohio, tells the story of her new electric range and its uses in harvest time. She fed as many as twenty and thirty men at times and her meals were not light luncheons, for farm hands like real food. "Pies and fried chicken and baked beans," writes this farmer's wife, "were what I served." Yet her monthly bills with all this cooking never amounted to more than $6.57. Besides the range she had a radio, electric lights, a washing machine and an ironer and her farmer husband uses electricity on his corn shellers, emery wheel and cream separator. If this isn't a story of a better life on a farm, then I do not know what it is.

E.R.

Eleanor's mention of the Rural Electrification Act (REA) while in Warm Springs was likely not an accident. Some historians speculate that FDR's encounter with high electricity prices in Warm Springs was one of the inspirations for the Act, along with other New Deal policies.

Eleanor would not write her column from Warm Springs for another two decades. Devastatingly, she was not there on April 12, 1945, when he died of a massive stroke  in The Little White House in Warm Springs. Instead she briefed Vice President Harry Truman on her husband's death, and then flew south to make funeral arrangements.

Whether or not Eleanor was thinking of her husband's love of Warm Springs and Georgia when she submitted a pecan pie recipe to the "Hollis Pantry Secrets" cookbook in 1946 we may never know. But it wasn't the first time she had submitted a pecan pie recipe to a community cookbook. As early as 1934, she was sending pecan pie recipes out upon request, and referencing pecan pie as being served at the White House.

There was also a recipe circulating called "White House Pecan Pie" as early as 1938. Was this Eleanor's recipe? Well, maybe? But more likely it was named after White House Brand pecans, as the recipe is not an exact match for Eleanor's.

But if Eleanor was not much of a cook, who came up with the pecan pie recipe? Well, we may never know its true origin, but the recipe Eleanor submitted to newspapers and "Hollis Pantry Secrets" is almost verbatim the pecan pie recipe White House cook and housekeeper Henrietta Nesbitt published in her 1951 cookbook, The Presidential Cookbook: Feeding the Roosevelts and Their Guests. 

I find it ironic that the much-maligned housekeeper and wife who tried to keep Franklin in simple, low-calorie foods would propagate one of the richest pie recipes out there for the general public. Still, it's easy to see why pecan pie became such a national favorite in the early 20th century - it's one of my favorites, too! 

Of course, my encounters with pecan pie were largely by accident. My mom once told me that when she and my dad were first married, my dad's mother made pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Because my mom's family were living in Ohio, Grandma mistakenly thought they were from the South, and made pecan pie to make Mom feel more at home. Of course, Mom had only moved to Ohio her senior year in high school and was, in fact, born in the upper Midwest. Still, it was a sweet gesture, and one that I appreciated, as pecan pie became a regular Thanksgiving player, and by extension my favorite as a child.

What kind of pie is your favorite? What will you be having for Thanksgiving? 

​If you'd like to read more about Warm Springs, GA and its connection to the Roosevelts, check out the book Hi'ya, Neighbor by Ruth Stevens, published in 1947 and containing first-person accounts of Warm Springs during the Roosevelts' tenure. Happy reading!

​The Food Historian is supported by patrons on Patreon, subscribers on Substack, and people who leave tips. Your support helps keep this blog free and open to everyone. Thank you!

A few weeks ago I found myself in used bookstore heaven. Catnap Books in Schoharie, NY is a classically old-fashioned bookstore. Tucked away in the back by the office was heaven - four full shelves of cookbooks, the vast majority of them vintage ones. I easily spent $100 that day and could have spent more. One of the books I bought was Rain, Hail, and Baked Beans: A New England Seasonal Cook Book by Duncan MacDonald and Robb Sagendorph. Originally published in 1958, it's one of my favorite styles of cookbooks - a vintage, scratch cookbook that hearkens back to an earlier time. There are nine chapters for each of the NINE seasons of New England (not four, not six), which I loved. Much more sensible. And for those who are interested in the history of early 20th century inns and food tourism, there's an index of New England Inns and their recipes in the back, too. 

I've talked before about why Americans all over the country think of New England when they think of fall, but being in such close proximity to it (New York is ALMOST New England), I can appreciate the sentiments. When I opened the book for a read-through, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the first chapter was "Early Fall" - clearly the authors thought fall was the best time in New England back then, too. 

It's a quick and delightful read, although some of the recipes seem more 1950s-flavored than 18th or 19th century. I turned to it when I had a little dilemma I wanted to solve. I had leftover homemade applesauce I needed to use up before it started to ferment in the fridge, so I wanted a classic applesauce spice cake recipe. And since I love putting fruit in things, I wanted to add blackberries. Last year I made apple blackberry crumble, which was divine, but I felt like something different this time around. ​

This recipe was a fairly classic spice cake recipe, but I liked that the immediately previous recipe calls for cooking apples to make your own sauce, which I appreciated, having done the exact same thing not quite a week earlier. Here's the verbatim:

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon warm water
1 cup applesauce, unsweetened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup seedless raisins, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts

Dissolve soda in water and stir into applesauce. Mix sugar and spices. Cream sugar mixture and butter. Stir in applesauce and vanilla. Add molasses, then stir in flour sifted with salt, raisins, and walnuts. Bake in a greased 9-inch tube pan in a moderate oven (350 F) for 40 minutes.

I made a few modifications for my recipe, the two largest being substituting blackberries for the raisins and walnuts, and not baking it in a tube pan, because all I had was a bundt pan, and that's not quite the same thing. 

I also realized halfway through that I didn't have enough molasses - only about a 1/4 cup. Unwilling to run to the store, I rinsed the bottle with a little hot water, and filled the rest with maple syrup. This made the batter rather runnier than it probably should have been, but the molasses also gave the cake an intense molasses flavor which drowned out the apples entirely. 

Because the cake was so moist and because I baked it in a 9" round pan, instead of a cake pan, I baked it for quite a bit longer than 40 minutes - it ended up being over 60 minutes until the cake sprang back properly when touched, and even then it was very soft in the center still. 

Despite being more molasses-y than I would have liked, and moister than it was probably supposed to be, it still turned out deliciously, and was a huge hit with my husband, for whom dry cake is anathema. It definitely had all the right flavors for fall and New England and as a bonus, it used up both the homemade applesauce in my fridge and a carton of blackberries languishing in there, too. And what better way to honor New England food traditions than to be frugal and not let autumn produce go to waste? 

What do you think - is this a cake you would like to try? Have you read Rain, Hail, and Baked Beans? If you haven't, luckily for you HathiTrust has digitized the whole thing. Happy reading!

The Food Historian is supported by patrons on Patreon, subscribers on Substack, and people who leave tips. Your support helps keep this blog free and open to everyone. Thank you!