Pumpkin Pie (Thanksgiving classic)

Classic American Thanksgiving pumpkin pie with spiced custard filling

Origin: Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

From the journey of Pumpkin & Squash.

Pumpkin pie is the most symbolically loaded dish in the American culinary calendar; inseparable from Thanksgiving and the national mythology of the Pilgrim harvest. The earliest English settlers at Plymouth did not make pumpkin pie as we know it; they had no ovens and no butter or flour to spare. They made a proto-pumpkin preparation: pumpkin hollowed out, filled with milk, honey, and spice, then roasted in the embers: a technique learned from Indigenous people. The recognisable custard-filled pastry shell version emerged in Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796), the first American cookbook, in a form very close to what we make today.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 175 g plain flour
  • 100 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 3 tbsp ice-cold water

Filling

  • 425 g pumpkin puree (tinned or homemade from roasted sugar pumpkin)
  • 200 g light brown sugar
  • 2 whole eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
  • 300 ml evaporated milk

Spice

  • 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 0.5 tsp ground ginger
  • 0.25 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 0.25 tsp ground allspice

Seasoning

  • 0.5 tsp salt

Serve

  • 200 ml double cream, whipped for serving

Method

  1. Make the pastry: rub butter into flour and salt until breadcrumbs. Add ice water, bring to a dough. Flatten into a disc, wrap, chill 30 minutes.
  2. Roll to 3mm, line a 23cm pie dish, crimp edges, chill 15 minutes. Blind bake at 190C for 15 min with baking beans, then 5 min without until pale golden.
  3. Whisk together pumpkin puree, brown sugar, eggs, evaporated milk, all spices, and salt until completely smooth. Taste and adjust spice level.
  4. Pour filling into baked pastry shell. Bake at 160C for 45-55 minutes until set at edges with a slight wobble in the centre.
  5. Cool completely on a wire rack, at least 2 hours. Serve at room temperature or lightly chilled with whipped cream.

Notes

To make pumpkin puree from scratch: halve a sugar pumpkin or kabocha, roast cut-side down at 190C for 45 minutes, scoop and blend smooth. Tinned pumpkin puree produces excellent, consistent results and is used by most American home cooks. Do not use pre-spiced tinned pumpkin pie filling.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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