When I invite any of my friends—be they from childhood or later in life—to holiday festivities at my family’s house, they ask if my mom will be making her pecan pie. I know that if my answer is yes, they’ll show up—no RSVP needed. That’s just how good it is.
For many years, I thought the pie was my mom’s personal recipe, honed and crafted to the best version of itself over many years of Thanksgivings, Christmases, and my parents’ annual New Year’s Eve parties. But it’s actually from an old cookbook: The Farm Journal’s Best Ever Recipes, a compendium of top-rated recipes submitted by readers and selected by editors.
Published in 1977, the book was a wedding present for my mom in 1978. I’m sure glad it crossed her desk, because she estimates that she’s made hundreds by now—most of them by request.
The Farm Journal’s USDA Pecan Pie
Glowing in bright orangey-red leatherette, The Farm Journal’s Best-Ever Recipes easily falls open to page 258, which contains my mom’s legendary go-to recipe, “USDA Pecan Pie.” And while I’m sure there are other fine recipes in the book, this is the only one that has seasoned years of corn-syrup splatters to prove its worth.
The recipe headnote features extensive praise from Farm Journal subscribers. “My husband tells me to forget every other kind of pie during the holidays—just to make pecan pies,” reads one note from a reader in Massachusetts. “I have used this USDA Pecan Pie recipe so often that my Pie Cookbook falls open to the page,” reads another from Texas.
For my mom, the 1979 Farm Journal Cookbook has become something of a file cabinet for loose recipe cards, printouts, and Post-it notes. Yes, it contains the legendary pecan pie recipe, but its interior flaps display a Scotch-tape patchwork of most-requested recipes—from pimento cheese and No-Boil Lasagna to oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The firm, bright cover of this cookbook makes reaching for it that much easier.
How To Make My Mom’s Best Pecan Pie
Deborah Jessee
The recipe starts out simple enough: You preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, then beat four eggs until they are blended together but not frothy. It’s important not to overbeat the eggs—the cookbook calls for a “rotary beater,” an old-school hand-cranked mixer that’s hard to come by these days, but my mom uses a fork—this does the trick to blend the eggs without overbeating them.
Next, you gently beat in the sweet stuff: one cup of granulated sugar, a pinch (about 1/8 of a teaspoon) of salt, and 1 1/2 cups of dark corn syrup. Stir in melted butter and vanilla, then add the pecans to a prepared pie shell, and pour the mixture overtop. The pecans may float to the surface, and that’s okay! They’ll settle and disperse as they cook in the filling.
For the last step, place the pie in the preheated oven and immediately reduce the heat to 325 degrees F, which allows the custard filling to cook ever-so-gently. Bake about an hour until the top is toasty, golden brown. You can smell it when it’s ready, my mom always says—and she really means it.
What Makes My Mom’s Pecan Recipe So Good
Allrecipes / Qi Ai
It turns out that there are a few modifications my mom has made over the years to make this pecan pie different. No shade to the original version, but after many years of testing—a history of different ovens, kitchens, and kitchen gadgets—I am more confident in my mom’s modifications than close adherence to the original. I’m always careful to heed her reminders when I make this pie on my own. It doesn’t turn out quite like hers, but I can get pretty close, thanks to her notes.
- Use room temperature eggs. It’s important that all of the ingredients are room temperature when they go into the batter—and finally, into the oven. That means no refrigerated corn syrup, and absolutely no chilly eggs! If you forgot to bring your eggs to room temperature, place them in a bowl with slightly warm water for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Stick with dark corn syrup. My mom’s first and most important rule: Always use dark corn syrup. While she swears by Karo corn syrup, which has been her tried-and-true go-to for as long as I can remember, any sort of corn syrup will do as long as it’s dark in hue.
- More—and a little more—pecans. Always add more pecans than the recipe calls for—and never chop them. Many Southern pecan pie recipes call for chopped, uniform morsels of pecans, but my mom finds that pecan halves offer the best gradation of texture and impart the toastiest, nuttiest flavor as the brown kernel surface caramelizes slightly in the oven. “Based on guests and friends’ feedback, they are unaccustomed to the emphasis on the nut rather than the filling, my mom says. “Although the filling is tasty too!”
- Do not use deep-dish pie crusts. It can be tempting to reach for refrigerated deep-dish pie crusts at the store—and they’re often easier to spot in the refrigerator pastry section—but it’s important for these pies to be at a regular depth. This is because the custard filling already takes quite a long time to cook, and it also allows the pecans—and always an excess of them—to shine. Trust me when I say there is plenty gooey custard to go around.