American · Dessert
Pumpkin Pie
A single-crust custard pie of spiced pumpkin puree, baked just until set. One serving is one slice from a 23cm pie.
CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped and colour-adjusted for this site.
Method
Rub the 90 g unsalted butter into the 150 g plain flour and 2 g fine sea salt until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, over 6m. Add the 45 ml water and bring the dough together with a few strokes, without overworking it.
Flatten the dough into a disc, wrap it, and chill for 30m.
Roll the chilled dough out and line a pie tin with it, trimming and crimping the edge, over 8m. Prick the base and chill again briefly.
Line the pastry case with baking paper and fill with baking beans. Blind bake at 190 °C for 15m, then remove the paper and beans.
While the crust bakes, whisk the 425 g canned pumpkin puree with the 3 eggs (150 g), the 150 g light brown sugar, the 250 ml double cream, the 4 g ground cinnamon, the 3 g fresh ginger, the 1 g ground nutmeg, the 10 cloves (1 g) and the 2 g fine sea salt until smooth, over 6m.
Pour the filling into the warm pastry case. Bake at 180 °C for 50m, until the outer edges are set and only a small circle at the very centre still wobbles.
Common pitfallAn overbaked custard filling cracks across the top as it cools. It is done once the outer few centimetres are set and only a small circle at the centre still wobbles; that centre firms up entirely as the pie cools.
Leave the pie to cool completely for 2h, so the centre finishes setting, before slicing.
No pumpkin pie was served at the 1621 harvest gathering now remembered as the first Thanksgiving. The two surviving written accounts of that meal list Indian corn, waterfowl, venison and a range of vegetables, but no pumpkin dessert of any kind [1]. What the earliest colonists did do with pumpkins and other winter squash was stew them into a thick, sweetened porridge, or occasionally fill a hollowed pumpkin shell with milk and spices and bake it directly in hot ashes: a pudding, not yet a pie in a crust.
The pie as a category took root over the following century. Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published in 1796 and widely regarded as the first cookbook written and published by an American, remained in print for 35 years and is believed to be the first cookbook to include a precursor to pumpkin pie [3]: two recipes for "pompkin" pudding baked in a crust, made with stewed pumpkin, eggs, cream or milk, sugar and spices. They are the direct ancestor of the pie eaten today [2]. Pumpkin desserts had already found a place at New England's harvest table by then in less formal ways: Colchester, Connecticut is said to have postponed its Thanksgiving observance by a week in 1705 because the town lacked the molasses needed to make one [1].
The pie's status as the holiday's default dessert nationwide is thus a nineteenth-century consolidation of a much older colonial habit, not a fixture of the meal it is now nostalgically attached to.
Sources
- The History of Pumpkin Pie, History.com (A&E Television Networks)On pumpkin pie's absence from the 1621 harvest feast and its later adoption.
- American Cookery, WikipediaOn Amelia Simmons's 1796 cookbook and its two pumpkin-pudding recipes.
- Amelia Simmons and America's First Cookbook, New York AlmanackOn American Cookery as the first cookbook to include a precursor to pumpkin pie, and its 35 years in print.