HFF 6.3: Pie

The Challenge: Pie! [Yes, I set this challenge to fall on Pi Day.]

The Recipe: Pumpkin Pie (American) from Mrs. Hale's New Cook Book.

Pumpkin Pie (American)--Take out the seeds, and pare the pumpkin or squash; but in taking out the seeds do not scrape the inside of the pumpkin; the part nearest the seed is the sweetest; then stew the pumpkin, and strain it through a sieve or cullender. To a quart of milk, for a family pie, 3 eggs are sufficient. Stir in the stewed pumpkin with your milk and beaten-up eggs, till it is as thick as you can stir round rapidly and easily. If the pie is wanted richer make it thinner, and add sweet cream or another egg or two; but even 1 egg to a quart of milk makes "very decent pies." Sweeten with molasses or sugar; add 2 tea-spoonsful of salt, 2 table-spoonsful of sifted cinnamon, and 1 of powdered ginger; but allspice may be used, or any other spice that may be preferred. The peel of a lemon grated in gives it a pleasant flavor. The more eggs, says an American authority, the better the pie. Some put 1 egg to a gill of milk. Bake about an hour in deep plates, or shallow dishes, without an upper crust, in a hot oven.

I selected this receipt, out of several similar ones from Mrs. Ellis's Housekeeping Made Easy (1843), The Skilled Housewife's Book (1852), and Breakfast Dinner and Tea (1859), because it gave clear amounts of spice to include. The proportion of milk to pumpkin is not quantitatively stated, but compared to the other recipes it is probably around 1 quart milk to 1 quart pumpkin.

The Date/Year and Region: 1857, Philadelphia

How Did You Make It: I used pumpkin out of my garden. This batch was peeled/boiled/sieved as described in the recipe, then frozen for a few months, though I still have three other ripe pumpkins from that harvest which are ready to use, so I'm counting it as 'in season'. 

 I stirred together 4 cups pumpkin, 4 cups milk, 2 eggs, ~1/2 cup granulated sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2  Tbsp cinnamon, 1 Tbsp ginger. While the oven pre-heated, I rolled up a simple 1-2-3 pie crust, lined a pie tin with it, and filled the crust with pumpkin filling. I then baked the pie at 400F for 60 minutes.

Time to Complete: A bit over an hour, with the pumpkin processing done in advance.

Total Cost: Ingredients were all on hand.

How Successful Was It?: The pie eventually firmed up and it smelled very nice while baking. The finished product was moist, enough that I worry it might have been on the underdone side. The taste is spicy enough, but a bit bland. It's not as strongly pumpkin-flavored as most modern pies I remember.

I'll probably continue to tinker with this recipe, since I still have a lot of pumpkins that I need to do something with. I did try to drain off as much liquid as possible while mashing the boiled pumpkins, but perhaps using them promptly without freezing will make the difference in moisture content.

How Accurate Is It?: Other than freezing the pumpkin, I feel that I followed the instructions fairly well. I rounded down to 2 eggs to account for size differences from the 1850s to now, which I think is fair; even if this over-corrected the issue, the receipt allows for using fewer eggs. The texture concerned me: I know pumpkin pie filling starts out very liquid, and that the instructions said "stir round rapidly and evenly", but the consistency was closer to "soup" than "mashed turnips" (which is how the other recipes describe the intended consistency); fortunately, it seemed up bake up solid enough.