Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Grated Pumpkin Pie

Early pumpkin pies were made from pureed or sliced pumpkin.  A third option was to use grated pumpkin. It is important to remove the excess liquid from the grated pumpkin, as described below, before making any of the pie recipes...

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To remove excess liquid
It is important to remove some of the liquid from the grated pieces, since pumpkin slices excrete liquid when heated.  The moist pieces could be “...put into a piece of cheese cloth and squeeze out the water.” [Perkins,  Evora Bucknum.  Laurel Health Cookery.  Melrose, Mass.: 1911]  “Boil the pumpkin in the milk until it swells.”  [Presbyterian Cookbook.  Dayton, Ohio: 1873]  I have also tossed sugar with the gratings and after an hour poured out the excess liquid, or slightly fried the pieces to remove some moisture.
 
Pie Varieties
Grated Pumpkin Pies generally contained milk or cream, eggs, sugar and spices. Some recipes called for equal amount of milk/cream to pumpkin; but others had double the amount of milk to pumpkin. One recipe, in 1852 by Hale, only had the grated pumpkin, sugar, lemon juice and allspice… no milk. Interestingly, cocoa was suggested as a flavoring in Russell Trall’s The New Hydropathic Cook-Book. NY: 1854
SOME RECIPES:
Hasty Pumpkin Pie
One pint of grated pumpkin (raw); one quart of milk; six eggs; sugar and spice to taste. Boil the pumpkin in the milk until it swells; then let it get cold; add eggs and sugar with any spice you choose.
Presbyterian Cookbook. Dayton, Ohio: 1873
Grated Pumpkin Pie
... grate the fruit close down to the outside skin; sweeten the pulp; mix with milk and cream; flavor with grated lemon, citron, or cocoa, and bake in a single crust.
Trall, Russell. The New Hydropathic Cook-Book. NY: 1854
Pumpkin Pie (English).
Take out the seeds, and grate the pumpkin till you come to the outside skin. Sweeten the pulp; add a little ground allspice, lemon peel and lemon juice; in short, flavor it to the taste. Bake without an upper crust.
Hale, Sarah. Ladies’ New Book of Cookery. NY: 1852
©2011 Patricia Bixler Reber
hearthcook.com

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