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Pumpkin, Squash, or Sweet Potato Pie
2 Cupfuls Steamed, Sifted Pumpkin, Squash, or Sweet Potato 1/2 Cupful Sugar 2 Eggs, Slightly Beaten ¼ Teaspoonful Salt 1¼ Cupfuls Milk 2 Tablespoonfuls Melted Snowdrift 1 Teaspoonful Vanilla Pastry Combine all the ingredients, except the pastry, and mix thoroughly. Then roll out the pastry and line a pie-plate with it building up the edges. Pour in the mixture and bake according to the directions given in the pastry introduction.
A plain custard pie filling built on steamed, sieved vegetable pulp rather than canned puree. The recipe leans on the book's pastry chapter for baking instructions, so the times and temperatures below fill that gap.
- SnowdriftA brand of cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, which the branded ingredient suggests sponsored this book. Any neutral solid vegetable shortening works; two tablespoons of melted butter gives a better flavour.
- Steamed, sifted pumpkinCut and steam the flesh until tender, then press it through a sieve or food mill so no fibre remains. Canned solid-pack pumpkin substitutes directly, cup for cup, but drain it if it looks watery, since the steamed pulp here has already lost moisture.
- The measurementsRead the salt as a quarter teaspoon and the milk as one and a quarter cupfuls. Two cups of pulp with only a half cup of sugar makes a distinctly restrained pie by current tastes; a scant three quarters of a cup is nearer modern expectation.
- Baking, since the pastry chapter is not hereStart at 425F for 15 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 350F for 35 to 45 minutes. The centre should still wobble slightly when the pie leaves the oven; it firms as it cools.
- Preventing a soggy baseA wet custard poured into raw pastry weeps into it. Blind-bake the shell for 10 minutes before filling, or brush the base with beaten egg white and let it dry in the hot oven for a minute.
- Sweet potato versionSweet potato pulp is denser and sweeter than pumpkin, so it needs slightly more milk to pour cleanly and slightly less sugar. Squash, particularly a dry-fleshed winter variety, behaves almost exactly like pumpkin.
- YieldEnough for one 9-inch pie, serving six to eight. The filling is generous for an 8-inch plate, so build the edges up as directed or hold back a few tablespoons.
Snowdrift was a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening marketed from the American South, and cookbooks like this one were published to persuade households to use it in place of lard and butter. That commercial purpose explains why two tablespoons of melted shortening appear in a custard filling that scarcely needs fat, and why the pastry directions live in a separate introductory chapter the recipe simply points to. The three vegetables offered interchangeably reflect ordinary kitchen practice rather than novelty: pumpkin, winter squash and sweet potato all cook down to a sweet, starchy puree that sets in an egg-and-milk custard. Pumpkin and squash appear together in eighteenth-century American books, while sweet potato as an interchangeable pie filling is a nineteenth-century development. The sweet potato variant is particularly associated with Southern cooking.