Pumpkin Pie
One heaping cup steamed pumpkin, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 egg, 1 tsp. cinnamon (scant), 1/2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. salt.
— Mrs. M. Howard Ferguson
A church-cookbook shorthand recipe: it lists the flavoring for one pie and assumes the cook already knows how to build the custard and the crust. Two things are missing outright and have to be supplied.
- The missing liquidAs written there is no milk, and the filling would bake into a stiff paste. A single-crust 9-inch pumpkin pie with one heaping cup of pumpkin needs roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups of milk or evaporated milk to set as a custard. Whether the liquid was dropped in printing or simply taken for granted by the contributor cannot be told from the page.
- One egg is thinOne egg for a whole pie gives a soft, loose set. Two eggs produce the firmer slice modern eaters expect, especially if you use whole milk rather than evaporated.
- Steamed pumpkinThis means fresh pie pumpkin cut up, steamed until tender, then drained and mashed or sieved. Fresh pumpkin holds much more water than canned; press it in a sieve or cook it down in a dry pan until it mounds on a spoon, or the custard will weep. One 15-oz can of solid-pack pumpkin substitutes for the heaping cup with a little to spare.
- Brown sugarBrown sugar of the period was often less refined and stronger in flavour than today's light brown. Dark brown sugar likely gets closer to the intended taste; pack it into the cup.
- CrustThe recipe assumes an unbaked single bottom crust. Any standard 9-inch pie shell works.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Standard practice is a hot start to set the pastry, about 425F for 15 minutes, then reduced to 350F for another 35 to 45 minutes.
- When it is donePull the pie when the outer two inches are set and the center still trembles like loose jelly. A knife-clean center means the custard has gone past done and will crack as it cools.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Cool completely before cutting; the filling firms considerably as it drops to room temperature.
Community cookbooks like this one were compiled by church groups and sold to raise funds. The recipes came in as members wrote them out, which is why so many read like notes to someone who already knew the dish: no crust, no oven, no baking time, and here not even the milk. Pumpkin custard baked in pastry goes back in English cookery well before it became fixed to American Thanksgiving, and the seasoning trio of cinnamon, ginger and salt with a molasses-heavy sugar is the older, plainer profile; the pre-blended "pumpkin pie spice" sold ready-mixed is the later development. The single egg and the reliance on brown sugar rather than white both point to an economical kitchen, where a pie was seasoned with what was already in the pantry.