Thanksgiving will soon be here, and the feast whether vegan, gluten free, or traditional probably will include the perennial dessert favorite: Pumpkin Pie.
Pumpkins and their various preparations have been part of the American diet since the first English colonists arrived in New England. One of the earliest recipes for a pumpkin-based dessert appeared in The French Cook, published in England in 1653. The author’s recipe for Tourte of Pumpkin is deceptively simple:
Boile [sic] it with good milk, pass it through a straining pan very thick, and mix it with sugar, butter, a little salt and, if you will, a few stamped almonds; let all be very thin. Put it in your sheet of paste [pie crust?]; bake it. After it is baked, besprinkle it with sugar and serve.
The writer leaves out the part about stewing the pumpkin all day before extracting the pulp.
In 1796 Amelia Simons published American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America. Simons offered several pumpkin pie recipes.
No 1. One quart stewed and strained, 3 pints cream, 9 beaten eggs, sugar, mace, nutmeg and ginger, laid into a paste [pie crust] No. 7 or 3, and with a dough spur, cross and checker it, and baked in dishes three quarters of an hour.
Paste Recipe No. 3:
To any quantity of flour, rub in 3/4ths of its weight in butter (12 eggs to a peck). Rub in 1/3 or 1/2, and roll in the rest. Put in deep pie pan
During the 19th century, pumpkin pie transitioned into an iconic dessert that should be on all Thanksgiving dinner tables. The addition was partly due to Northwood, a novel by Sarah Josepha Hale published in 1827, that listed pumpkin pie as part of a traditional Thanksgiving meal.
A poem published in the Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture in 1850 further declared:
But here beneath bright Freedom’s sky
A land that valor won,
We’ll sing our famous Pumpkin Pie,
From morn till setting sun!
Enter Libby’s
In the late 19th century Libby McNeil Libby was a canned meat company, particularly known from its canned corned beef. In 1906 Libby’s also produced condensed and evaporated milk. In 1912 Libby’s published its first pumpkin pie recipe to sell more evaporated milk.
“Pumpkin Pie: 1 ½ cups cooked and strained pumpkin, 2 eggs, ¾ cup sugar, ¼ cup molasses, ½ tablespoonful cinnamon, ½ tablespoonful ginger, 1/8 teaspoonful salt, 1 cup (1/2 can) Libby’s Evaporated Milk, with 1 cupful water. Mix pumpkin, molasses, sugar and spices together. Add the mixed milk and water, then add the eggs thoroughly beaten. Mix well and put into deep pie tins lined with pastry. Bake 45 minutes in a moderate oven.”
In 1929 Libby’s acquired Dickinson & Co. which specialized in canning peas, corn, and squash. Over time, the demand for canned peas and corn declined, but Libby’s popularized canned pumpkin with the pie recipe on the back of the can.
Today Libby’s produces 85 per cent of canned pumpkin in the United States. During the 1950s Libby’s introduced the pie recipe still found on the back of the can. In 2019, Libby’s added a second recipe to the label which added sweetened condensed milk and reduced the amount of sugar so the pie filling would be easier to mix.
The World’s Largest Pumpkin Pie
Every year there are contests for growing the largest pumpkin, and also for baking the largest pumpkin pie. In 2010 the Guinness Book of World Records recorded that the pie baked at the New Bremen Pumpkinfest held the title. As far as I know the title still holds.
The massive dessert used 1,212 pounds of canned pumpkin; 109 gallons of evaporated milk; 2,796 eggs; 7 pounds of salt; 14-1/2 pounds of cinnamon, and 525 pounds of sugar. The pie crust consisted of 440 sheets of dough pressed into a pie pan produced by Arctect Fabricating, a welding company. The pie was baked in a special oven for 13 hours. When it was finished, the completed pie weighed 3,699 pounds, was 20 feet in diameter, and produced 5,000 pieces of pie.
A picture of the massive pie is here
If you want to see the pie emerge from its special oven, here it is.
🥧 🥧 🥧 🥧 🥧
Sandra’s Books: Sea Tigers & Merchants. Ambition, Arrogance & Pride. Saxon Heroines. Two Coins. Rama’s Labyrinth.
Illustrations & A Few Sources
Thanksgiving Postcard, 1910; American Cookery cover; Libby’s Cooked Corn Beef ad; Pumpkin Pie with Libby’s can. Ellen Terrell. “A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America.” Library of Congress Blogs. Nov. 20, 2017. Sarah Wassberg. “Secret Behind Libby’s Original Pumpkin Pie Recipe.” Food History Blog. Nov. 25, 2020.
