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Pumpkin Pie (Following measure will make)
The following measure will make three good sized pies: Put into your mixing dish one quart and a pint of stewed and strained pumpkin, about one-quarter pound sugar, half cup molasses, half a tablespoon each ginger, nutmeg, a scant teaspoonful each of cinnamon and salt, one-quarter cup melted butter and one quart of milk. Beat six eggs and add to the mixture, and stir until the ingredients are well blended. Bake in a good, deep crust.
A large-batch custard filling written for a cook who owned three pie plates and used them all at once. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, which are the two things you need to supply.
- The measures in cupsOne quart and a pint of pumpkin is 6 cups; one quart of milk is 4 cups. A quarter pound of sugar is about half a cup plus two tablespoons of granulated. Scale everything by a third for a single pie.
- Oven and timingStart at 425F for 15 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 350F for 40 to 50 minutes. The filling is done when the outer two inches are firm and the center still wobbles as one mass; it will finish setting as it cools.
- Stewed and strained pumpkinThis means pumpkin cooked soft and pushed through a sieve, which is wetter than canned puree. If you steam and sieve your own, let it drain in a cloth-lined strainer or the custard will weep. Canned solid-pack pumpkin substitutes directly, cup for cup.
- Not pie fillingCanned "pumpkin pie filling" is already sweetened and spiced. Use plain canned pumpkin or the seasoning here will double up.
- The spicing is heavyThe spicing — Half a tablespoon each of ginger and nutmeg across three pies works out at about half a teaspoon of each per pie, and the scant teaspoon of cinnamon at roughly a third of a teaspoon per pie. Freshly grated nutmeg in that proportion is assertive. Taste the mixture before it goes into the shells and pull back if it reads harsh.
- The crust"A good, deep crust" means a deep-dish shell that will hold a wet custard. Partially blind bake it and brush the inside with beaten egg white before filling, or the bottom turns to paste.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will bury the spices.
- Yield and keepingThree 9-inch deep pies, roughly eight slices each. Because this is an egg and milk custard, cool it to room temperature and then refrigerate; it keeps three or four days.
Pumpkin pie in this form — sieved squash bound with eggs, milk and sweet spice, baked in a single crust — is a New England custard pie, related to earlier colonial "pompion" dishes in which the stewed flesh was cooked with milk and spice; the frequently repeated account of a hollowed shell filled with milk and spices and baked rests on a small number of early traveller's descriptions. The half cup of molasses alongside the sugar is the older habit showing through: molasses was a cheap everyday sweetener in American kitchens well into the nineteenth century, and refined white sugar only gradually displaced it. The scale of the recipe assumes holiday baking for a large table, an ample supply of milk and eggs, and an oven judged by hand rather than by dial.