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New England Pumpkin Pudding
3 pounds of dry stewed pumpkin. 1/2 pound of sugar or maple syrup. 6 ounces of butter. 1 pint of cream. 10 eggs. 1/2 a nutmeg grated. 1/2 teaspoonful of grated cinnamon.
Steam the pumpkin and mash the required amount through a colander, as dry as possible. It is generally well worth while to stew down the pumpkin with the sugar and butter in--which prevents burning--till it has become thick and transparent. Then add the cream and eggs well beaten together, and the spices. Bake in two buttered pudding pans about half an hour. Is best when just done, but good either hot or cold. Brandy, rum or wine are sometimes mixed in; but not necessary.
Squash pudding can be made by the foregoing receipt. Once and again I made the following for a crowd of passengers aground on a steamboat up the Arkansas, and they were glad I could.
A crustless baked custard in the pumpkin-pie family, scaled for a hotel table. The whole thing turns on how much water you drive out of the pumpkin before the eggs go in.
- Dry the pumpkin firstThe instruction to stew the puree down with the sugar and butter until "thick and transparent" is the hinge of the recipe, not an optional step. Wet pumpkin gives a custard that weeps and separates in the pan; cook it in a wide pan over moderate heat, stirring, until a spoon drawn through leaves a track.
- Quantities in modern terms3 lb of dry stewed pumpkin is roughly 6 cups of thick puree, or about three 15 oz cans of solid-pack pumpkin (not pie filling), which will still want reducing. Half a pound of sugar is a scant 1 1/4 cups; 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks; a pint of cream is 2 cups.
- The eggsEggs of the period generally ran smaller than today's large, so eight or nine large eggs is probably closer to the intent than a straight ten. Beat them into the cream, as written, before they meet the hot pumpkin, and add the mixture off the heat so nothing scrambles.
- Nutmeg and cinnamonHalf a grated nutmeg is a generous teaspoon of freshly grated, which is assertive but correct for the period. Whole nutmegs vary; grate and measure rather than counting halves.
- No oven temperature is givenBake at 350F. Custards of this depth also do better with the pans set in a water bath, though the original does not call for one.
- DonenessHalf an hour is plausible only for shallow pans. Bake until the edges are set and the center still trembles slightly, around 170-175F on an instant-read thermometer; carryover finishes it. Pushed past that, the custard curdles and weeps.
- Pans and yield"Two buttered pudding pans" is not specified further; something on the order of two shallow bakers is a reasonable reading, since the half-hour bake suits shallow rather than deep pans. The full quantity is a large batch, serving roughly sixteen. Halving it works, allowing for a shorter bake.
- The spiritsBrandy, rum or wine, if used, go in with the cream and eggs. Two to three tablespoons is enough to read in the finished pudding without loosening the set.
History: Pumpkin baked with eggs, cream and spice belongs to the same family as pumpkin pie, and early printed receipts move freely between a pudding baked in a dish and one baked in a crust. Pumpkin and winter squash were often treated as interchangeable, which is why the recipe closes by saying squash pudding follows the same receipt. The insistence on stewing the pumpkin down until thick and transparent reflects a period without canned puree, when field pumpkins were watery and stringy and a wet puree would spoil the set. The Arkansas River anecdote points to a writer working from steamboat and hotel kitchens rather than a domestic one: the quantities are professional, the tone that of a man used to feeding a room of strangers on what happened to be aboard.