The World's Largest Pecan Pie Required An Absurd Amount Of Ingredients

Apple pie may be considered America's favorite dessert, but when it comes to the Southernmost part of the union, pecan pie is the pastry that reigns above all. Possibly created in New Orleans, pecan pie's first official recipes were undoubtedly published in cookbooks by Texans (per Eater). And although the decadent sweet has found its way onto Thanksgiving dessert tables across the nation, it's still thought of as a classic down-South dish.

That's why when the world's largest pecan pie record needed breaking, it only made sense that Southerners would answer the call (per Guinness World Records). And not just any group of Southerners, Texans from the state pecan pie more than likely got its start in were the ones to put this massive pastry together.

But when we say massive, we mean it. Because the sheer amount of ingredients poured into the world's largest pecan pie makes the 200 pounds of sugar, 4,000 egg yolks, and 20 gallons of milk in the globe's biggest crème brûlée look like child's play.

According to Guinness World Records, the largest pecan pie in the world was baked up by the El Paso Diablos Baseball Club in 1999. Aside from the fact the pie was assembled in El Paso Texas' Cohen Stadium, very few details are available about how this juggernaut of a dessert came to be. But the El Paso Cohen Baseball team's astounding legacy lives on in the documentation of how much food went into their record-breaking creation.

If you want to beat out the current world's largest pecan pie record, here's the ingredient list you'd have to outdo. To start off, Texas Monthly reports that the Texans used 3,471 pounds of flour, 2,085 pounds of shortening, 170 pounds of sugar, 170 pounds of powdered milk, and 3,000 pounds of water for the crust. The filling then took 1,500 pounds of pecans, 13,350 pounds of sugar, 850 pounds of butter, 200 pounds of salt, 6,700 pounds of eggs, 210 pounds of vanilla, and 9,700 of corn syrup to make.

The pie formed by this recipe came out weighing 41,586 pounds (via Guinness World Records). That means the world's largest pecan pie weighs more than two adult elephants (per International Fund for Animal Welfare). So if you're still hoping to break the record, you're going to need to make a lot of adjustments to your go-to pecan pie recipe.