I love recipe contests – and have some great pecan recipes. Unfortunately, this pecan recipe contest ended a hundred years ago.
1924 Pecan Recipe Contest
I love recipe contests – and have some great pecan recipes. Unfortunately, this pecan recipe contest ended a hundred years ago.
Oh drat! This one had a lot of prizes, everyone a winner!
Next time!
I guess they could sell a lot of pecans.. I had to see if pecans can be grown in PA and they can in the southern part. Pecan trees are all over here and I recently came across some in a state park and tasted one of them. PS Texans say pecan very different than PA Dutch do. Had to change that.
I also noticed the PA address for this company, and was surprised. I tend to think of pecans as more of a southern nut.
This ad is a nostalgic smile bringer. I bet there was some delicious and some interesting entries in the contest. 😊
It would have been fun to see the winning recipes.
I found an item from Lancaster about Elam Hess, “who owned 10,000 acres of pecan groves in southern Georgia.” Hess’ office was in Manheim, PA. When he ran the ad for recipes, “more than 5,000 homemakers sent in more than 21,000 recipes.” After testing all the 21,000 recipes, Keystone Pecan Co. published 800 Proved Pecan Recipes. One of the recipes in the book was “Southern Candied Sweet Potatoes” which included 1 cup of maple syrup.
Wow, it’s amazing how many recipes they received. Based on a quick search, I think that “800 Proved Pecan Recipes” is a 1925 cookbook. I’ll have to watch for it – and maybe can get started on getting cookbooks for next year’s blog posts. 🙂
It’s really interesting that the company was located in PA, yet the pecan groves were in GA. I wonder why it was organized in that way. There’s a lot of miles between those two states, and it must have been challenging to maintain good communications between the company offices and the pecan groves a hundred years ago.
Hess was a resident of Manheim when he became interested in investing in pecan orchards. Georgia was considered the ideal pecan growing locations. He had quite an extensive business securing investors in the growing orchard. I found the recipe book on Google Books for download–there are print copies for sale, but I just downloaded the free version in pdf. I might just want to make some pecan bread!
Fascinating. He was very entrepreneurial. If it wasn’t so long ago, his business sounds like it would make a great case study for a MBA program. I’m going to download the pecan cookbook next.
Yes and the prize money 100 years ago would have been a lot.
I entered $25 into an online inflation calculator and it looks like $25 in 1924 would be worth more than $350 today.