Today we’re going to be baking a pumpkin pudding, or as we know it, a pumpkin pie from Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook, American Cookery.

• 1 pint Pumpkin
• 1 quart Milk
• 4 Eggs well beaten
• ½ cup Molasses
• 1 teaspoon Ginger
• 1 teaspoon Allspice
• 2 Pie Crusts

Cut pumpkin in half, gut and bake upside down at 350 degrees for about an hour to soften. Peal and mash then add milk and mix. Next, add eggs, and molasses. Finally, mix in spices and pour into pie crust.

Bake in oven at 325 for 75 minutes. Allow to cool before eating.

Transcript of Video:

In the last several episodes, we’ve been doing American Holiday recipes from Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook, American Cookery. Today we’re going to be baking a pumpkin pudding, or as we know it, a pumpkin pie. Thanks for joining us today on 18^th Century Cooking with James Townsend and Son.

You know, when we first read this recipe, we really weren’t quite sure. It seemed that the proportions really just weren’t going to work out, but we tried it anyway, and trust us, it works. Our recipe starts off with pumpkin. It calls for 1 pint of pumpkin. The best way I found to prep our pumpkin is to actually slice our pumpkin in half and take out the innards and then turn them upside down on a baking sheet and bake them for about an hour or so at about 350 degrees and that gets them nice and soft and the skin peels easily away and we can get our pumpkin out without any work at all. If you want to cheat and do it the simple way, just buy a can of pumpkin. That’ll work just as well. It looks like about half of this small pumpkin is going to be our pint.

Okay, that looks really good. Now we’re going to add 1 quart of milk. Now, this is where it was tricky, seemed like 1 quart of milk was going to be way too much. Let’s get this mixed in here. Our mixture’s very, very soupy. Now were going to add 4 eggs that we’ve already whipped together, and the recipe calls for molasses. Now, she doesn’t tell us exactly how much to use. I played around with this recipe a bit and a half a cup is probably about right. We’re not using a black strap molasses, but any grade of a lighter grade of molasses.

Our last ingredients are spices. We’re going to need a teaspoon of ginger and a teaspoon of allspice. We’re going to pour our pie filling into our pie crust. You can use any short paste for this recipe. It will work great. We did a previous episode on a short paste, so make sure to check that out.

This recipe makes enough for probably 2 pies. This will need to bake about an hour and 15 minutes, maybe an hour and a half at 325. This recipe actually calls for a lattice on top of this pie crust, but it turns out that this is so liquidy that it just sinks to the bottom, so just make this an open top pie.

Boy, this pie looks great, and I love pumpkin pie. Normally I’d be digging into it right now, but we’re just going to have to wait. We’re going to wait until this final episode of the series where we put together this whole feast based on the Amelia Simmons’ cookbook. I want to thank you for joining us today as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18^th Century.