The Art of Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is my favorite pie — hands down! Afterall, it is a vegetable and a pie! Like some of my books are thrillers and mysteries.

I come from a long line of ‘damn fine pie makers.’ One aunt has that exact wording etched in her tombstone. The best pumpkin pies begin with a luscious, heavy, ripe pie pumpkin. Thick meaty inside, easy to puree, with a heady pumpkin aroma. A perfect, light crust. Lots of nutmeg, to ease you into the after-turkey hallucination phase, but not too much. And heavy cream whipped by someone standing by with nothing to do but wait for the turkey to crisp.

When I was small, we grew pie pumpkins in a quarter acre truck garden on the family farm. Now we go to market or to a pumpkin patch with the sweet pie pumpkins relegated to the too small to carve but ideal to bake patch. Those who claim to know tell me the Dickinson pumpkin, an heirloom pie pumpkin, is the go-to pumpkin for cooking (Cucuribita moschata). I don’t know that I ever knew the name, just the weight, heavy for its size, not round but a wee tallish, with a little softness at the bud end. You want a pumpkin with firm texture, so the puree is thick. Watery puree mutes the taste of the pie.

The next step is, of course, to steam or bake the pumpkin until the meat is soft and tender and ready for the other ingredients to make it creamy, heady, and luscious. Now a days, you can take the stem out and pop in the microwave, saving untold amounts of time and guessing.

Every family – well, Midwestern family — has a pie recipe handed down from some past grandma. I’d guess most of the recipes use Eagle Brand condensed milk which originated in the mid-1800s and was a staple by the end of the Civil War. While Eagle Brand canned milk is credited with significantly lowering the rate of infant mortality, it is equally famous for fattening us all on pumpkin pie. I don’t know when the ubiquitous pumpkin pie recipe arrived in cookbooks, but I do know that in 1931 Borden’s offered $25 for recipes that used their condensed or evaporated milk and received 80,000 responses.

If you are making your pie from scratch, great grandmas everywhere advise baking the crust first to avoid a soggy bottomed pie. Like pumpkin pies, families passed down crust recipes and techniques from mother to daughter. Or, in my case, grandmother to granddaughter. My mother’s mother made magnificent crusts – pastries, of all sorts, would that I had her skill. Her crusts were truly flaky, firm, and tasty. I can still hear her advising to never overwork the ingredients. And she always had left over dough, taken from edges, or just more dough than pies. She used it to make pig ears. A pig ear is pie dough rolled in butter, cinnamon and sugar then coiled around itself and baked into a wonderful pastry, in case you didn’t have a Swiss grandmother with too much dough.

So, this Thanksgiving, I pause to genuinely appreciate the ladies in my past who baked in the old style, beginning with flour, fresh vegetables, fruits and meat, and the ever-useful measuring spoons on the ends of their wrists. As I write my historical mysteries featuring Cora Countryman and her cohorts, I rely on the lesson I learned in their kitchens to bring the demanding work, the sense of accomplishment, their dedication to my character’s lives.

Perhaps I’ll have Cora bake a pumpkin pie come fall 1877. Cora, of Unbecoming a Lady and A Confluence of Enemies (coming January 15), grows her own pumpkins in the garden on the corner of her boarding house’s lot. Her brother who runs a dairy co-op to the north of Wanee would supply the cream or she might buy a can of Eagle Brand at Layman’s Dry Goods in town. Cora will bake the crust, steam the pumpkin, mash, then whisk the pumpkin meat into puree, and add the cream and spices. The resulting pie would compete with her mother’s famous lemon bars. Her long-time boarder, the newspaper editor, and the new doctor in town would scarf it down, Doc getting whipped cream on the tip of his nose.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Cora’s adventures begin in Unbecoming a Lady, https://www.amazon.com/Unbecoming-Lady-D-Z-Church-ebook/dp/B0BTKBSP1B. A Confluence of Enemies, the second book in the Wanee Mystery series, is available January 15, 2024.