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Pumpkin Pie (Mrs F J Wright C pumpkin T)
Mrs. F. J. Wright. 1 C pumpkin 1 T molasses 1 egg ½ C scalded milk Sift the dry ingredients in flour sifter, add other items as they come and milk last (while still hot). Bake in single crust. Ruth W. Nicholas
A community-cookbook shorthand recipe: it assumes you already know what goes into a pumpkin pie and only records one contributor's proportions. The dry ingredients it tells you to sift are never listed, so this needs filling in before it can be baked.
- The missing ingredientsThe instruction to "sift the dry ingredients" refers to items that were left out of the printed list — sugar, salt and spice. Standard proportions for this quantity of custard would be about 1/2 cup sugar (brown or white), 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon each ginger and nutmeg. Anything you add here is your reconstruction, not the original.
- C and TC is a cup; T is a tablespoon (a lower-case t would be a teaspoon). The molasses is a single tablespoon, used for color and depth rather than as the main sweetener.
- Scalded milk, added lastMilk heated to just below a simmer, about 180F, with the surface trembling. Adding it hot to the pumpkin and egg mixture warms the custard so it sets faster in the oven, but pour it in slowly while whisking or the egg will curdle into threads.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Custard pies are best started at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the crust, then dropped to 325-350F for 30 to 40 minutes.
- DonenessPull the pie when the outer two inches are set and the center still wobbles as a unit; it firms as it cools. Baked until the middle is solid, the custard will weep and crack.
- Single crustAn unbaked bottom shell only, no top. Blind-baking the shell for 10 minutes before filling gives a firmer base than filling it raw, as the original directs.
- PumpkinOne cup of cooked, drained, mashed pumpkin. Canned solid-pack pumpkin works directly; fresh pumpkin should be roasted and drained well, as excess water will keep the custard from setting.
- YieldRoughly 3 cups of filling once the unlisted sugar is included — enough for one 8- or 9-inch pie.
This entry carries two names — Mrs. F. J. Wright as contributor and Ruth W. Nicholas beneath, though that second name may just as easily belong to the recipe that follows — and the dry ingredients simply fell out along the way. The compilers assumed pumpkin pie needed no explaining: it was so thoroughly a fixture of the American autumn table that a contributor only bothered to record what distinguished her version, in this case the tablespoon of molasses and the scalded-milk method.