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Pumpkin Pie
To make one pie, rub through a sieve cooked pumpkin enough to make two cups. To this add a small cup of sugar, a saltspoon of salt, one teaspoon of cinnamon and one of ginger and a pint of hot milk, and mix thoroughly. When cold stir in two well-beaten eggs and fill a pie plate that has been lined with good, rich paste. It will require three-quarters of an hour to bake.
A plain custard-style pumpkin pie with no oven temperature and a very generous amount of milk. Two things need attention before you start: the liquid ratio and the point at which the eggs go in.
- Let the mixture cool, and mean itThe pumpkin is combined with a pint of hot milk first, then cooled before the eggs are stirred in. Add eggs to a warm mixture and they set in threads that will not sieve out. Cool to room temperature, or chill, before beating them in.
- The milk is a lotTwo cups of pumpkin, a pint of milk and only two eggs gives a thin, barely-set custard by modern standards. It also makes a great deal of filling -- more than a deep 9-inch shell will hold -- and it may weep. Reducing the milk to about 1 1/2 cups, or adding a third egg, brings it closer to a modern set without changing the character of the pie.
- Small cup, saltspoonA "small cup" of sugar is roughly 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon.
- Cooked pumpkinField pumpkin steamed or baked until soft, then sieved. Canned solid-pack pumpkin (not pie filling, which is already sweetened and spiced) is the direct equivalent, though it is drier and denser; if using fresh pumpkin, drain the puree well or the extra water compounds the loose custard.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A custard pie in a raw shell is best started hot to set the pastry, about 425F for 15 minutes, then dropped to 350F for the remainder. Three-quarters of an hour total is about right at those settings.
- Judging donenessThe center should still wobble slightly when the pie is drawn out; an instant-read thermometer in the middle should show about 175F. Baking until the center is firm means an overcooked, cracked custard, since it continues to set as it cools.
- Rich pasteAn all-butter or lard-and-butter shortcrust. Chill the lined plate hard before filling, and consider partially blind-baking it, which this recipe does not call for but which is the usual remedy for a soft bottom under a wet filling.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Serve cool or at room temperature, not hot.
Pumpkin pie was already an old New England habit by the time this book was printed: seventeenth-century English cookery had "pompion" pies, often with layers of sliced pumpkin and apple rather than a custard, and the smooth sieved-and-spiced version settled into its familiar shape over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What makes this particular recipe a period piece is its restraint — sugar, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nothing more. Nutmeg, cloves and molasses are said to have appeared in other households' versions, and the modern American "pumpkin spice" combination reflects those richer, darker recipes rather than this one. The call for hot milk has a practical benefit here: it loosens the sieved pumpkin into a smooth custard base. Household manuals of this kind usually gave times but not temperatures, since a wood or coal range had no dial and the cook judged heat by hand and experience.