Pumpkin Pie
11/½ cups steamed and strained pumpkin. 2 tablespoons flour. 1 cup soft brown sugar. 1 tablespoon rose water. 1 tablespoon brandy.
Juice 1 lemon.
Grated rind 1/2 lemon. ½ teaspoon ginger. ½ teaspoon salt. 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon. 2 eggs slightly beaten. 1½ cups milk.
PROCESS: Mix ingredients in the order given. Turn in pie-pan lined with pastry. Bake in a hot oven for the first five minutes to set pastry; then reduce heat and bake slowly twenty-five minutes.
A lightly spiced custard pie in the older American style, leaning on rose water and brandy rather than heavy spicing. The quantities below are workable once the oven stages are pinned to real numbers.
- Oven temperatures"A hot oven" is not defined in the book; in modern terms roughly 425-450F for the first five minutes to set the bottom crust, then down to about 325-350F for the remaining bake. Move the shelf to the lower third so the base keeps getting heat after the temperature falls.
- Baking timeTwenty-five minutes at the lower heat will rarely be enough for a filling this wet; expect 35-45 minutes. The pie is done when the outer inch is set and the centre still wobbles as a single mass, not in ripples.
- Steamed and strained pumpkinSteaming rather than boiling keeps the flesh from waterlogging, and straining through a sieve removes the fibres. Canned pumpkin puree (not pie filling, which is pre-sweetened and spiced) is a direct substitute; if it looks loose, dry it in a pan for a few minutes first.
- Rose waterStill sold in Middle Eastern groceries and baking aisles, but modern extracts vary widely in strength. A tablespoon of a concentrated product will taste soapy; start with a teaspoon and judge.
- Soft brown sugarThis means a moist brown sugar, roughly comparable to what we now sell as light or mid-brown. Pack it into the cup and break up any clumps, since dry pockets will not dissolve in a filling this thin.
- The salt and ginger1 1/2 teaspoons of salt is high for a single pie; a scant half teaspoon is safer. The ginger at 1 1/2 teaspoons dominates the spicing here, with only a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon behind it.
- Blind bakingThe five-minute blast is presumably meant to set the pastry in place of blind baking, and it only half works. Chilling the lined pan thoroughly, or pre-baking the shell with weights, gives a firmer base under a custard this loose.
- YieldEnough for one 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Cool at least two hours before cutting; the custard firms considerably as it drops to room temperature.
Pumpkin pie in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is often closer to a squash custard than to the clove-and-nutmeg version familiar from twentieth-century canned-pumpkin cookery, and the rose water and brandy here are the older habit showing through: rose water was a common English and colonial flavouring for custards and cakes long before vanilla extract became cheap and universal. Ginger leading the spicing, with only a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon behind it, points the same way.