"There may not be any dessert that screams "America" more than a classic pumpkin pie. The celebrated fall staple has become synonymous with good old-fashioned American home cooking over the years, and it's been gracing bakery windows and Thanksgiving tables for as long as anyone can remember. It's impossible to trace exactly where the dish came from, but we do know which cookbook may have been the first to feature the first custard-style one: "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons."
"Published in 1796, "American Cookery" is believed to be the first cookbook written by an American author. Unlike the British cookbooks available at the time, Simmons' dishes focused on local ingredients like cornmeal and squash. One of the recipes featured was for "pompkin pudding," which featured stewed pumpkin, cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, mace, and ginger, all baked in a crust for 45 minutes."
"Simmons actually published two different "pompkin" pudding recipes at the time. The second one utilizes molasses instead of sugar, and it's baked for one hour. It also doesn't call for any lattice topping, like the first version does, so it's probably more similar to the pumpkin pies a lot of us make today. But as with the first recipe, Simmons didn't give any measurements for the spices or sweeteners, which makes things interesting for modern bakers."
A custard-style pumpkin pie recipe from 1796 used stewed pumpkin, cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, mace, and ginger baked in a crust for 45 minutes. A second pudding variant used molasses, lacked a lattice topping, and baked for an hour, resembling modern pumpkin pie. English pies of the period used sliced, stacked pumpkin with a top crust rather than a mashed custard filling. Early New England colonists likely developed the mashed custard-style filling that became standard. Original recipes omitted exact measurements for spices and sweeteners, challenging modern recreations.
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