To colonists living in America in the 17th century few things were more important to their survival than
pumpkins, as one poem from the 1630s put it
"Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon
If it was not for pumpkin, we should be undone."
And as I wish not to be undone I'm making one of America's first recipes for pumpkin pie from 1796,
so thank you to NordVPN for sponsoring this video as we make America's first pumpkin pie
this time on Tasting History.
Today's recipe comes from 'American Cookery' by Amelia Simmons which was published in Hartford Connecticut in 1796.
It's often considered the first cookbook by an American published in the relatively new United States of America,
and it has some of the earliest recipes for pumpkin pie
especially that custardy pumpkin pie that we know and love today,
but her her recipes are still rather different than the modern pumpkin pie.
She actually has two recipes but the one I'm making today simply calls for
"One quart of milk, 1 pint pompkin, 4 eggs, molasses,
allspice and ginger in a crust, bake 1 hour."
So a few differences between this and the modern pumpkin pie. First of all
she calls it pompkin and you'll find that early on there are a lot of ways to spell the word pumpkin,
none of which is actually pumpkin.
The French spelled it pompom which came from medieval French and then the English turned it into pompion or pumpion,
and both of those words could really refer to all manner of squash, or even melons sometimes.
It wasn't until later that they added the K to make pompkin, -kin being a suffix that could be used
to denote a similarity between things.
Another theory is that the K came from the Massachusett language as their word for this food was pôhpukun.
Either way the spelling pumpkin is really the last one to come around,
and I'm curious if in a couple hundred years there'll be even a different way to spell it.
The second major difference between this and a modern pie is that she sweetens it not with sugar,
but with molasses so it will be far less sweet than we're used to,
but I've decided to make it anyway because this is Tasting History, and having something that tastes
a little bit different is part of the fun.
Another thing that I find fun is watching British TV shows
even though they haven't come out here in the US and for that I need a little help from today's sponsor NordVPN.
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nerd alert,
and it turns out that a lot of the resources that I use
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and they just- I couldn't get them. I guess 17th century journal entries on pumpkins are just too scandalous for the EU
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supporting educational content specifically historical cooking content here on YouTube.
And for this historical cooking content what you'll need is: 1 quart or 1 liter of whole milk,
4 eggs, a 1/2 cup or 190 grams of molasses, 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of all spice, and 2 teaspoons of ginger,
and 2 cups or 450 grams of pumpkin. I'm using a sugar pumpkin because it is as the name
would suggest a little bit sweeter than others, but really any squash is going to work.
To make life easier you can also use canned pumpkin and this is typically Dickinson pumpkin
but if you are going to use a whole pumpkin then you have a few options on how to cook it.
She says in one of the recipes that it can be stewed and strained,
and that makes me think she never actually tried it because if you stew and strain it
one it becomes very watery, and two it loses all of its flavor,
and pumpkin doesn't have a very strong flavor as it is,
so instead I would do as most recipes from this time suggest and roast it.
So cut it in half and scoop out all of the insides then set it on a lined baking sheet
and bake it at 350° F / 175° C for 1 hour and as soon as it's done
take it out and remove the skin while it's still hot it should come off very easily in strips.
Then let it cool just a bit before mashing it up as smooth as you can,
and if you want to you can pass it through a strainer to get even a nicer smoother puree.
Then to the pumpkin you're going to add the eggs which should be well beaten then the molasses
which should be the sweetest molasses that you can find. There are multiple kinds.
You don't want sulfured or blackstrap molasses, it's going to just be too bitter.
Then add some of the milk and start to whisk the ingredients together, and then add in the allspice and ginger,
and the rest of the milk and whisk until everything is well combined.
This is so much more liquidy than a modern filling so I'm going to guess that it's going to be quite lighter as well.
Now she says to put it into a crust and you can just use your favorite pie crust, that's fine,
but in the first recipe for the pompkin pie she says to use either recipe 3 or 7 which she has several paste recipes in there.
I am going to be using number three because it sounds wonderfully rich.
It says "To any quantity of flour, rub in three fourths of it's weight of butter,
(twelve eggs to a peck) rub in one third or half,
and roll in the rest."
To make this crust what you'll need is: 1 pound or 450 grams of flour, 3/4 of a pound of butter and 2 eggs.
Rub the butter into the flour until you get a sort of breadcrumb consistency,
and then add in the egg. Mix in the egg until you have something like a pie dough should be.
Then roll it out and line a deep pie pan and you do want the deepest pan that you can find
because it is a lot of filling or you can make two regular sized pies as well, either one will work.
Whichever you choose give the crust a crimp and then you'll need to blind bake it if you want any chance of this pastry actually getting cooked.
So line the crust with some foil and add in some pie weights and then bake this for 15 minutes at 350° F.
Take it out, remove the weights and return it to the oven and bake for another 15 or 20 minutes
or until all the crust is pretty much baked.
You can also use a pie shield which is this thing that goes around the crust if the crust starts to brown too much.
It has saved many a crust for me.
Then let the crust cool and start ladling in the filling.
I filled it about 3/4 of the way full then put it in the oven and ladled the rest afterward
because moving this with all the liquid, you're going to make a huge mess, so
get it mostly full, put in the oven and then ladle in that final amount.
Once it's in the oven you're going to bake it at 350° F for about 75 to 80 minutes
or until there's just a slight wobble in the middle,
and while it bakes do hit the Like button as I tell you how this iconic pumpkin pie became a staple of American cookery.
America's love affair with pumpkins goes back long before America was even a thing.
Different squashes were staples of the cuisine of numerous indigenous people from North Central and South America
so it's no wonder that when Europeans did come to the New World pumpkins were among the first foods they encountered.
"The country aboundeth naturally with store of good roots of great variety and good to eat...
Here are also store of pumpions, cowcumbers, and other things of that nature which I know not."
When in 1634 a Dutch surgeon and his compatriots were on the verge of starvation in Upstate New York
it was the pumpkin brought to them by indigenous people of the area that saved them.
"December 30th... A woman came to meet us, bringing us baked pumpkins to eat...
[We] ate heartily of pumpkins, beans, and venison, so that we were not hungry,
but were treated as well as is possible in their land."
This dependence on pumpkins runs through many stories from this early period of American History,
mainly because Europeans often arrived woefully ignorant
of how to grow their European crops in this new land.
For example in 1654 Edward Johnson wrote a history of the first English settlers of Massachusetts.
In it he says that when the English arrived in what they would call Concord, Massachusetts in 1635
"the want of English grain, wheat, barley, and rye proved a sore affliction to some stomachs,
who could not live upon Indian bread and water...
instead of apples and pears, they had pumpkins and squashes of diverse kinds."
That is many new varieties of pumpkin and squash,
and exactly what they're talking about is unclear because as I said at this time many people
used the term pompion or pumpkin to mean all sorts of different squashes and even melons
and so you get terrible definitions like this one from 1629 which says that
a pumpion is a "fruit, which is very great, sometimes of the bigness of a man's body,
and often times less in some ribbed or bunched, in other plained, and either long or round,
either green or yellow, or gray, as Nature listeth to show herself."
My favorite thing about this is that the author John Parkinson realizes about halfway through
that his description is so vague as to make it pretty much useless as a definition
"for it is but waste time, to recite all the forms and colors may be observed in them."
What most descriptions of the time don't include is the fact that pumpkins are often orange
rather the "great round pompion [is] often times of a greener color with a harder bark."
Or the "Common pumpion... is either long, flat, round, or pyramidal,
having a hard... rind, of a green or dark green color, spotted with white."
First off I want to see what a pyramidal pumpkin looks like.
Is it pyramidal? Piramidal?
A pyramid-shaped pumpkin, what is he talking about?
Also even though the fact that the outside of these pumpkins tended to be white or green
"their pulp is as yellow as saffron"
which makes me think that any of them could work in a pie like the one that is in my oven right now.
And these pumpkins regardless of their color were perfect for the early settlers because they were numerous,
and they grew in great quantities. When they were planted in Virginia in 1615
"[pumpkins] propagated in [such] abundance that a hundred were frequently observed to spring from one seed."
And they made the pumpkin into all sorts of dishes including pottages, soups, puddings
or something that in 1671 was described as the "ancient New England standing dish."
They would take a pumpkin and stew it in water for an entire day and then they would mix it with
"Butter... and a little vinegar, (with some spice, and ginger, etc)
which makes it tart like an apple... It provokes urine extremely and is very windy."
So it made you have to pee and it made you gassy, how lovely.
Now even though they were using pumpkins in all sorts of dishes it doesn't seem that the colonists
were entirely won over by the food just yet.
In Massachusetts for example by 1642 they had anglofied the countryside
so that instead of relying on fish and beans for their protein they had beef, and pork, and mutton available,
and for desserts they had "apples, pears, and quince tarts instead of their former pompkin pies."
And around this period when their European foods had finally become available in the New World
pumpkin's reputation became a bit tarnished.
Now in England and the colonies it didn't go away completely but it became thought of as
a food that you ate because you had to, because you didn't have access to something else, or you couldn't afford something else.
Why eat what they would often call the insipid flavored pumpkin
when you could have a sweet pear or apple for 2 or 3 times the price.
The ingredient does appear in a handful of cookbooks like 'The Queen-like Closet' by Hannah woolly in 1670
which is the source that I used when I made my pumpion pie a few years ago,
but really it never became a staple of the English kitchen or at least it wouldn't for quite some time.
The southern colonies also turned up their nose at pumpkins as something that was less than ideal to eat.
Really it was only in New England that the pumpkin continued to thrive,
and it did have its proponents like in 1654 when Edward Johnson wrote
"Let no man make a just at pumpkins,
for with this fruit the Lord was pleased to feed his people to their good content..."
And instead of seeing those early settlers reliance on pumpkins as something to be ashamed of
they began to see it as a bit of a badge of honor.
It was hearkening back to a simpler time when there were just a handful of colonists struggling to survive.
"The times wherein old pompion was a saint, when mans fared hardly yet without complaint.
On vilest cates, the dainty Indian maze was eat with clamp-shells out of wooden trays...
These golden times (too fortunate to hold) were quickly fined way for love of gold."
New Englanders clung to their beloved pumpkins and by the 18th century the word had actually become synonymous
with the people specifically those around Boston.
"Pompkin. A man or woman of Boston in America:
from the number of pumpkins raised and eaten by the people of that country."
And the area around Boston became known to some as Pumpkinshire,
and they were making all sorts of foods with these pumpkins.
From pumpkin soups and stews, to pumpkin pudding, pumpkin ale and
"Pumpkin porridge being as much in esteem with New England Saints,
as jelly broth with Old England Sinners."
There was even a recipe from 1770 albeit from Virginia "To Make Pompion Chips".
It called for thinly shaved pieces of pumpkin mixed with lemon peel
that were then boiled in a syrup of lemon juice and sugar.
And it actually sounds really good and maybe it'll be something that I need to try for Thanksgiving.
It was also around this time that pumpkin pie became associated with the early Thanksgivings.
In 1779 Congress declared 'That it be recommended to the several States to appoint Thursday the Ninth Day of December next
to be a day of public and solemn Thanksgiving to Almighty God for his mercies..."
And to celebrate that Thanksgiving the 18-year-old Juliana Smith of Connecticut enjoyed a feast, which she wrote to her
"Dear cousin Betsy." And she says that 'The pumpkin pies, apple tarts, and big Indian puddings lacked for nothing
save appetite by the time we had got round to them...
We did not rise from the table until it was quite dark,
and then when the dishes had been cleared away we all got round the fire as close as we could,
and cracked nuts and sang songs and told stories."
Sounds very cozy and frankly quite familiar to many of our Thanksgiving traditions today.
Namely the fact that by the time dessert rolls around I am usually so stuffed
that I have to wait to eat until the next day or at least a couple hours
where I can lie down on the couch like an exhausted manatee.
And speaking of Thanksgivings, 3 years ago I when I first started the channel pretty much,
I made the pumpion pie from 1670 and so many people ended up making that pie for Thanksgiving,
and having it on their holiday tables and they shared pictures with me,
and that has to be one of my favorite memories of the last three and a half years working on this channel,
just kind of being able to be part of other people's holidays.
It was so special, so this year if you make this pie
or any of the pumpkin desserts, or the pecan pie that doesn't have corn syrup in it
please share pictures either on Instagram or Reddit, or Facebook, or Twitter and tag me
because I really, really enjoy that.
Though if you are going to make this pumpkin pie I better show you how to finish baking it
because instead of taking it right out of the oven when it's fully baked
just turn off the oven and leave it in there, and you can wedge the door open with just a wooden spoon
because you want it to cool down very, very slowly. That's going to help it not crack.
You know how sometimes pumpkin pies will crack across the top, ruined.
This will help it not crack.
And once it's completely cool you can slice it up.
And here we are a slice of the first American pompkin pie.
I mean it's quite beautiful and actually I was a little worried that because it was so liquidy
that it was just going to melt but um it didn't.
It's definitely not as firm as a modern pumpkin pie but it holds together.
Hm!
That's really good.
So you're really getting the spice.
So much more than the sweetness because there ain't no sugar in it.
You're getting the sweetness only from the molasses but
it's killed all the bitterness of the molasses.
That's really, really good and if you don't like a sweet, sweet pumpkin pie this is the way to go.
The texture is wonderful. It is firm
but it's so smooth. It's more like a firm pudding.
If you do want it sweeter I would just add in maybe a half cup of brown sugar
when you're mixing everything together and that will sweeten it up. I don't think it's necessary.
Hmm! So I'm pretty sure that this is going to end up becoming a staple of my holiday season.
I think my parents are going to like this cuz it's not as sweet, yeah.
This is going to hang around till Christmas.
Another thing that is hanging around till Christmas is the Bayeux Tapestry Merry Christmas sweater that I did last year,
I'm bringing it back because I didn't put it out until way too late so a lot of people didn't get it
so I'll put a link in the description where you can get that if you want to show off your love of Christmas and the Norman invasion
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
So good. So smooth. Hm!