Pumpkin Pie
1 cup sifted pumpkin 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 saltspoon mace 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 2/3 cup sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup scalded milk 1/2 cup scalded cream Line a deep pie plate with plain paste. A rim of puff paste may be laid around the edge. Combine the first four ingredients, beat the egg and mix with sugar, pour the milk and cream into this slowly, combine with the pumpkin mixture and pour into the pie. Time, thirty-five to forty minutes. Squash may be substituted for pumpkin.
For potato pie use sweet potato boiled and sifted.
Lemon Pie, No. 1 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 3 tablespoons corn starch 1 cup boiling water 1 teaspoon butter Juice of 1 lemon Grated rind of 1/2 lemon Mix sugar and corn starch, add boiling water slowly and cook until clear; add the butter, beaten egg yolks and lemon; cool the mixture. Line a pie plate with half the rule for plain pastry, with a fork prick the bottom, or use a perforated pie pan. Bake the crust to a light brown, when done pour in the lemon mixture. Whip the whites of eggs very stiff, add 2 tablespoons of sifted powdered sugar. Spread this mixture over the top for a meringue; return to the oven and brown lightly.
Lemon Pie, No. 2 1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons cracker dust 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup milk 2 eggs Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon Use this rule to fill shallow muffin pans lined with rough puff paste, cover each with a meringue.
Three fillings run together in the original block, with no oven temperature and only one time given. The pumpkin recipe is a small, single-crust custard pie; both lemon fillings are cooked on the stovetop and set under meringue.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon, so the mace here is a whisper against the 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. If your mace is old and dusty, use fresh grated nutmeg in the same amount.
- Missing oven temperatureThe book gives no temperature. A hot start of about 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 350F for the remaining 20 to 25 minutes, is consistent with the stated 35 to 40 minutes; in a steady moderate oven expect to bake somewhat longer.
- Sifted pumpkinThis means cooked pumpkin pressed through a sieve, not raw grated flesh. Canned solid-pack pumpkin (not pie filling, which is already sweetened and spiced) is the direct equivalent, one cup.
- The hinge: do not overbake the custardPull the pie when the outer two inches are set and the centre still shivers as a coin-sized circle. Custard carries enough residual heat to finish; taken to a clean knife all over, it weeps and cracks as it cools.
- Scalded milk and creamScalding is usually explained as a way of dealing with enzymes and souring bacteria in raw dairy. With pasteurised milk it is optional, though warm liquid still dissolves the sugar and blends the puree more smoothly. Add it slowly to the beaten egg, as directed, or you will scramble it.
- Cracker dustIn Lemon Pie No. 2 this is finely crushed plain crackers, used as a thickener and binder. Fine unsalted cracker crumbs work; reduce nothing else, and note that this rule gives no stovetop cooking step -- the filling sets in the pastry.
- Meringue browningTwo tablespoons of sugar to two whites is a very soft meringue by modern standards. Spread it so it touches the pastry rim all round to stop shrinkage, and brown at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes rather than blasting it, so the interior cooks through.
- YieldThe pumpkin filling comes to roughly two and a half cups, enough for one 8- to 9-inch plate. Lemon No. 1 makes a similarly modest quantity, enough for one shallow shell; Lemon No. 2 will fill a batch of shallow muffin-tin tartlets.
Pumpkin custard baked in pastry is one of the oldest continuously made American sweets, and pumpkin puddings appear in printed American cookbooks from the late eighteenth century onward; a descent from English spiced squash and root-vegetable puddings is often proposed. What is notable in this version is its restraint: a single cup of pumpkin, one egg, half milk and half cream, and only cinnamon with a whisper of mace, where heavier clove-and-ginger blends are common elsewhere. The casual notes that squash may be substituted, and that boiled sifted sweet potato makes a potato pie, show one method applied to whatever starchy vegetable was to hand.