Butter pecan
 Butter pecan caramel ice cream | |
| Place of origin | United States |
|---|---|
| Main ingredients | pecans, butter, and vanilla |
Butter pecan is a flavor, prominent especially in the southern United States, in ice cream, cakes, and cookies. The flavor is an element of soul food, the cuisine of Black Americans. They popularized the flavor during Jim Crow as an alternative to the vanilla flavor that Black people were often forbidden by white Southerners from eating solely because of its white color.[1][2] Though it was not a definitive practice in some southern states, particularly along the east coast, countless Black American oral traditions have substantiated the claim.[3][4] Poet Maya Angelou recalled that Black Americans could eat vanilla ice cream only on the 4th of July. Research by culinary historian Michael Twitty states that Edmund Albius, an enslaved Black man, improved the cultivation of the Mexican spice that flavored ice cream on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.[5][6][7]
Roasted pecans, butter, and vanilla flavor are used in butter pecan baked goods. Butter pecan ice cream is smooth vanilla ice cream with a slight buttery flavor, with pecans added. It is manufactured by many major ice cream brands. A variant of the recipe is butter almond, which replaces the pecans with almonds.
Butter pecan is a popular flavor of ice cream produced by many companies and is also one of the thirty-one flavors of Baskin Robbins.[8]
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Butter pecan cookies
See also
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References
[edit]- ^ Lim, Angela (2023-06-27). "'A story of survival': Food influencer explains the racist history behind butter pecan ice cream". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2025-01-13.
- ^ "How Racism Played a Part in the Origin of Butter Pecan Ice Cream". USD News Center. University of San Diego. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
- ^ Ibrahim, Nur (2024-06-13). "Black People Couldn't Buy Vanilla Ice Cream Under Jim Crow?". Snopes. Retrieved 2025-01-13.
- ^ Yuko, Elizabeth (2022-03-01). "The History of Ice Cream, One of the World's Oldest Desserts". Reader's Digest. Retrieved 2025-01-13.
- ^ Twitty, Michael (2014). "Black people were denied vanilla ice cream in the Jim Crow south – except on Independence Day". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
- ^ Ghabour, Dahlia (2021). "'Is butter pecan ice cream a 'Black thing'?' Louisville podcast explores how race impacts food". Courier Journal. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
- ^ Ecott, Tim (2005). Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid. Grove Press. p. 137. ISBN 9780802142016.
- ^ Flavors | Baskin-Robbins
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