Pumpkin Pies
INGREDIENTS.-To every quart of pumpkin, strained, allow 6 eggs, 1/4 lb. of butter, 1/2 pint of sweet milk, lb. of white sugar, 1 tablespoonful of French brandy, 1 gill of madeira or sherry.
AVERAGE COST, 2s. per quart.
Cut the pumpkin into large pieces; peel these, and put them into cold water over a very slow fire; simmer, without boiling, until every piece is tender; then strain through a colander, and afterwards through coarse muslin, squeezing out every drop of water. To every quart of the pumpkin add the ingredients given above, beating the eggs till thick and light, and stirring Tipsy Cake.
Sultana Pudding.
Jam Rolls.
Apple Turnovers.
Apple Dumplings.
Sweet Omelette.
Tartlets.
Sausage Rolls.
Apple Snow.
Cheese Straws.
Cherry Tart.
Fritters.
Almond Tartlets.
Apricot Tarts.
Cabinet or Plum Pudding.
Puddings, Tarts, &c.
PUMPKIN, PRESERVED. the butter and sugar to a cream. well mixed, bake in a puff-paste.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE in September and October.
PUNCH, TO MAKE HOT.
When bowl, with the water, made boiling, poured over them. When the water is cold, and the sugar thoroughly dissolved, add the spirits and champagne and the juice of the lemon, and just before serving, break some ice into the bowl, and take out the lemonrind. Some thin slices of quartered lemon may be floated on the top of the punch.
SEASONABLE in Summer.
This is a custard filling baked in pastry, in the American manner but written for a British kitchen — no spice at all, and fortified wine doing the work that cinnamon and ginger usually do. The method of drying out the pumpkin is the part worth copying.
- The hinge: get the water outSimmering the peeled pumpkin below a boil, then straining through a colander and again through muslin with everything squeezed dry, is what keeps the custard from weeping. Wet purée gives a soupy, cracked filling. Modern cooks often roast the pumpkin instead for the same reason.
- A quart of pumpkinAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.1 litres of strained puree — roughly 2 lb 8 oz by weight, a very large quantity, enough for two or three 9-inch pies. Scale the whole ingredient list down proportionally if you want one.
- A gillHalf a cup, 5 fl oz imperial. The madeira or sherry plus the tablespoon of brandy is the entire flavouring of the dish, so use something you would drink.
- The sugar quantity is incompleteThe line reads simply "lb. of white sugar" with no fraction before it. Treat the amount as unrecorded and sweeten to taste rather than guessing at a full pound.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, distinguished in period usage from buttermilk or soured milk. Half a pint imperial is 10 fl oz.
- Puff pasteThe recipe specifies puff pastry, not shortcrust. A wet custard will soften a puff base badly, so blind-bake the shell before filling, or use shortcrust as later practice does.
- Oven and timeOne hour is given with no temperature. Bake at 375F to set the pastry edges, then drop to 325-350F; the custard is done when the outer two inches are set and the centre still trembles. It firms as it cools.
- SpicingIf you want the familiar flavour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove were entirely standard in American pumpkin pie by this date and their absence here is a matter of house style, not authenticity.
Pumpkin pie sits slightly awkwardly in a British book: the squash was a New World crop, and the sweet baked pumpkin custard is thoroughly American, associated with New England and with Thanksgiving from the early nineteenth century onward. The tell here is the seasoning: rather than the warm spicing an American cook might have used, this version leans on brandy and madeira, flavourings a Victorian English kitchen might well have reached for in a rich baked custard. The seasonable note points to a time when the pie was tied to the actual squash harvest rather than to a tin.