Home › Thanksgiving Dinners › Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin Pie
1 cup mashed pumpkin 1 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 or puff paste may be laid around the edge. Combine first four ingredients. Beat egg and mix with sugar, pour milk and cream into this slowly. Combine pumpkin mixture and pour into pie. Bake in moderate oven 35 to 40 minutes, after the first 10 minutes in a hot oven. Makes one pie.
A lean, old-style pumpkin custard: one egg and one cup of pumpkin to a cup of dairy, which sets soft rather than dense. The two-stage bake is the part to get right.
- Two oven temperatures"Hot oven" is usually taken as about 400-450F, "moderate" as about 350-375F. Give it the hot start for the first 10 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to moderate for the 35 to 40 minutes the recipe specifies. Skipping the hot start on a wet filling like this gives a pale, soggy base.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. Mace tastes different from nutmeg rather than simply milder, so measure it rather than eyeballing.
- The salt looks highA full teaspoon of salt in a single pie is more than most modern palates want, particularly with today's fine-grained table salt. Half a teaspoon is a safer starting point.
- Mashed pumpkinThis means plain cooked and drained pumpkin flesh, or unsweetened canned pumpkin purée -- not canned pie filling, which is already sweetened and spiced. If you cook your own, drain it well; watery purée will keep the custard from setting.
- Scalding the dairyMilk and cream are heated to just below a simmer, then poured slowly into the beaten egg and sugar while stirring. Pour too fast and the egg scrambles; scalding is usually explained as a way of dealing with raw, unpasteurised milk, and it also shortens the bake and smooths the texture.
- DonenessThe centre should still wobble slightly when the pie comes out -- a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean. Baked until the middle is firm, the custard will crack and weep as it cools.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe says only a deep pie plate and one pie; the filling comes to roughly two and a half cups, which will be a thin layer in a 9-inch plate, so a smaller plate will give more height. Figure on about six modest slices.