Yes, We Have an Aunt Bea (recipe: Classic Southern Pecan Pie)
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One of our favorite things to watch on television are the black and white Andy Griffith shows with Andy, Barney, Opie and Aunt Bea that take place in the mythical town called Mayberry. The show focuses on strong family values, love of country and God and Southern culture. Both my husband and I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time in real life Mayberrys. For me, Mayberry was Geneva, AL, the town where my parents grew up and both sets of grandparents lived. Mayberry for my husband was Carolina Community in Andalusia, AL where his father grew up in the house portrayed in the painting below. My sister-in-law, Vicki Garvin, photographed the painting and made copies for us. The old house was destroyed by fire several years ago.
My father-in-law, Mark Garvin, was one of 10 children born to Holly and Ruby Garvin. The family farmed and knew all the hardships that befell poor farming families in the rural South.
By the time I came around, Granddaddy Garvin (Holly) had died and Granny Garvin (Ruby) had dementia. Granny still lived in the house where she raised her family but she needed constant care which was lovingly provided by her youngest daughter, Beatrice, known as Bea. Aunt Bea’s a main character in the Garvin family just as Aunt Bea of Mayberry was in the Andy Griffith show.
Aunt Bea was typical of her generation. She had tireless energy and wasn’t the least bit afraid of hard work. She was an excellent cook and her dinner table would be filled with dishes that were typical of good ol’ fashioned Southern cooking. She was warm and welcoming and if you came in her house, she wanted to feed you.
I loved having conversations with her. She was always interested in everything you were doing. She and I would talk a lot about cooking and our favorite new recipes. It wasn’t hard to get her talking about stories of old. Coming from a large family, she never ran out of stories to tell. She kept track of all her nieces and nephews just as she did her siblings. In some regards, she became the family historian.
She was famous for her pecan pie. She would gather pecans from the pecan trees on the Garvin homestead. When I started collecting family recipes, numerous people reminded me to be sure and get Aunt Bea’s Pecan Pie recipe. Once you had Aunt Bea’s pie, it became your favorite. It sure made an impression on my husband. He’s talked about Bea’s pecan pie for as long as I’ve known him.
Aunt Bea has made her last pecan pie. Well into her seventies, she’s now dealing with her own dementia just as she dealt with her mother’s. Instead of her being the caretaker, she’s being cared for. Sometimes she recognizes people she’s known all her life. Sometimes she doesn’t. Time has stripped the life out of this once vibrant woman. She’s left her thumbprint on every person who’s ever had a slice of her pecan pie. And that’s a whole lot of people. We love you, Aunt Bea. We always will.
Y’all come see us!
Classic Southern Pecan Pie
Bea would divide the filling between two pie shells probably just trying to stretch it out as far she could. I’m sure that’s the way Granny Garvin made them, too. She would cook her pies on 275 degrees “for an hour or so”. I raised the temperature to 300 degrees to compensate for the larger amount of filling in the single pie. I sort of followed her instructions to “put the pie on the top rack”. I placed the rack higher than the center of the oven but didn’t go all the way to the top. I think my racks go higher than hers did. Her recipe didn’t indicate that the butter should be melted. I made that assumption. Given that I used unsalted butter, I added a pinch of salt. I increased the amount of pecans from 1 1/4 cup to 1 1/2 cups.
The filling in this pie maintains a lot of its syrupy character. That’s what appeals to my husband. He says he prefers Aunt Bea’s syrupy pecan pie to cakey pecan pies.
I prefer to chop the pecans instead of keeping the halves in whole pieces. I think the chopped pieces have more of a tendency to mix in the filling and are better distributed. Some believe you should throw the pecan pieces in the pie shell and top them with the filling. I think mixing them all together is just fine.
To experience this pie in its original form and the way it was made to stretch and feed as many folks as possible, decrease the amount of pecans to 1 1/4 cup and divide the filling between two pie shells. My daughter, Amy, has taken on the responsibility of making Aunt Bea’s Pecan Pies for all our family gatherings. She always makes them just as Aunt Bea did. I can’t look at those pies without thinking of Aunt Bea in her glory days. They also make me think about how these pies were used to feed lots of people when food was probably scarce.
1 pie shell (unbaked)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup Karo syrup
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt (omit if using salted butter)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
Stir sugar, Karo, eggs, vanilla, salt and butter until mixed well.
Add pecans and stir. Pour into unbaked 9 inch pie shell.
Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour or until the center is set. It took 70 minutes for me this time. The center can be a little jiggly. You don’t want it be sloshy. Remove from oven and let cool completely before slicing.
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Sweet old Aunt Bea
Amy,
It’s so sad when you see someone get in that shape. I pray I never do.
Oh my…just what I needed to see just before Christmas….now I guess I will putting one of these in the oven for sure…thanks for the wonderful, warm and memory laden intro to the recipe…
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and the family!!
Danny,
I don’t remember anyone in our family making pecan pies frequently. Granny Phillips would make one occasionally but not very often at all. They are sho ’nuff good!
What a lovely testimonial for a lovely lady. Jackie, you always have such great stories to write that uplift, make one think, and bring joy. Thank you for sharing this God given talent. May you have a very Merry Christmas! I love the idea of two pies out of one filling recipe, will be making this recipe soon.
Mary,
Thank you so much for your sweet comments. That’s a Christmas gift to me.
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
Your Granny sounds like a wonderful person as well as your Aunt Bea. It’s heartbreaking to see them losing out on life because of dementia. Very sad indeed. Sounds like you have lots of memories too. In those days families took care of the older ones…as there were no nursing homes. My Grandmother Radford took care of so many of their family. She didn’t do pecan pies but always made an egg custard pie sprinkled with nutmeg. Always has to be really thin…trying to save money and make it go farther..She was the one who did the sugary icings.Would love to see them and taste all of that just one more time..
Jean,
Making the pies thin was certainly a survival strategy for them.
I have been blessed by being surrounded by some wonderful people in my life. Aunt Bea is one of them. She accepted me as part of the family the first time she met me. She was a wonderful great Aunt to my children who have fond memories of her. My husband, Bea’s nephew, has wonderful memories of spending time at the Garvin family homestead as he was growing up. All the people in our lives have helped shaped us into the people we are today. Syrup and Biscuits is my little way of paying homage to them.
Done very well Jackie!
Thanks, Jean!
Love those pecan pies and they were part of my childhood too – we had pecan trees so there was always an abundance – that’s how I made my Christmas money – picking up pecans (and just learned that my parents used the pecan money they made to buy our Christmas). Pecans are part of my heritage and there is always a pecan pie on my table during the holidays! Love your story about Aunt Bea and I love watching those old Andy Griffith reruns too!!! Merry Christmas Jackie
Ann,
We have watched black and white Andy Griffith shows more times than we can count!
I love the memories and the food together!!
I wanted to add that Karo corn syrup so often cited in Southern pecan pie recipes is NOT Southern. Is there a Southern-produced corn syrup? I have tried to track down the history of Pecan Pie. Is it truly Southern? Yes, I believe it is. But I do not think Karo syrup was originally used by our Southern ancestral mothers. I think the Karo syrup recipe came about from having substituted the syrup for some other easily-accessible syrupy ingredients that Southerners would have used.
My family has a pecan pie recipe handed down from my great-great grandmother (having been born mid-1800s), and it does not use Karo syrup. Sadly, I do not have permission to share it! I would encourage Southerners to start looking around for non-Karo syrup versions of the pie! Karo syrup is NOT Southern. Yeah, might make a good pie, but not Southern.
And you know how some of us Southerners are, haha!
Hi Em! Thanks so much for your comment and your interest in food history. Karo Syrup came on the market in 1902. I’ve seen older pecan pie recipes that used cane syrup, molasses, sugar or a combination of the three. Pecan Pie is decidedly Southern with pecans being indigenous to the region.
Southern cooks embraced the idea of convenience foods as they became available. Canned condensed soups and evaporated milk are prime examples of those. Neither of those products are of Southern origin but they have been used so long in dishes associated with Southern cuisine, that the origins have become blurred. I particularly enjoy researching food history as it appears you do as well. Not everyone share our zeal.
Em, I’m happy to read anything you want to share about the origins of our food and foodways history. It’s one of my favorite topics.