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Pumpkin Pie, Cheap
2 pounds of dry mashed pumpkin. 4 ounces of sugar. 2 ounces of butter. 2 eggs. 1 cupful of milk. Little ground cinnamon.
Pumpkin Pie, 2 pounds of pumpkin--stewed dry. 8 ounces of butter. 12 ounces of sugar. 12 eggs. 1 cup of milk. Ginger, cinnamon, or nutmeg.
Beat the eggs light and stir them in after every thing else is mixed.
Two formulas printed side by side: a lean one and a rich one, both built on the same two pounds of stewed pumpkin. The book assumes a professional shop, so it gives no crust, no pan count and no oven time.
- "Stewed dry" is the whole pointThe pumpkin must be cooked down until it holds its shape and no water weeps out, which takes far longer than most cooks expect — 30 to 45 minutes of uncovered simmering after it is soft, stirred often. Wet pumpkin gives a filling that separates and a soggy bottom crust. Canned solid-pack pumpkin (not pie filling) is already close, but still benefits from a few minutes in a dry pan.
- Eggs last, and for a reasonThe final instruction is printed after the second formula and presumably applies to both: beat the eggs light and stir them into the already-mixed pumpkin, sugar, butter and milk. Beating eggs into hot or heavy pumpkin knocks the air out and gives a denser, more solid custard.
- Weights, not cups4 ounces of sugar is about a half cup; 12 ounces is about 1 2/3 cups. 2 ounces of butter is a half stick, 8 ounces is two sticks. Two pounds of dry mashed pumpkin is roughly a quart by volume, or a little over two 15-ounce cans.
- Twelve eggs is not a misprintThe rich version is essentially a pumpkin-flavoured custard tart, and it will set firm and slice cleanly. The cheap version, with two eggs to the same weight of pumpkin, is softer and more purely pumpkin-tasting; it wants a shorter bake and will crack less.
- YieldNo pan count is given, and the two formulas do not make the same amount: the lean one yields appreciably less filling than the egg-heavy one, on the order of two 9-inch shells against three. The book is written for a shop turning out pies by the dozen; halving is straightforward since nothing depends on the volume.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Standard practice for an unbaked shell filled with custard is a hot start of about 425F for 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 350F until the centre is just barely wobbly — 30 to 40 minutes more for the lean version, closer to 45 for the egg-heavy one. Pull it before the middle is firm; it finishes setting as it cools.
- Spices"Little ground cinnamon" and "ginger, cinnamon, or nutmeg" leave the quantity to the cook. For two pounds of pumpkin, 2 teaspoons total of ground spice is a modern middle ground. There is no salt in either formula; a half teaspoon is worth adding.
Jessup Whitehead wrote for the men running hotel and restaurant bake shops in late nineteenth-century America, which is why this page gives weights, no crust and no oven — a professional was assumed to own both. Printing a "cheap" formula next to the full one may well have been a commercial convenience: the same pumpkin and the same cup of milk, thinned on eggs and butter, presumably at a price a boarding house could bear, while the rich version served where the margin allowed. Pumpkin pie itself was already old and thoroughly regional by then, tied to New England and to Thanksgiving.