Pumpkin Pie Day

What the day is

Pumpkin Pie Day is observed on December 25, which is a slightly odd placement given that the pie belongs far more firmly to Thanksgiving a month earlier.

Origin and background

Pumpkins are squashes native to the Americas, and the earliest colonial versions of the dish were not pies in any modern sense. A common preparation hollowed out a whole pumpkin, filled it with milk and spices, and baked it in the embers. The custard-in-a-crust form appears later, and a recipe close to the familiar one shows up in the first American cookbook, published in 1796.

The most useful modern fact concerns the can. Most canned pumpkin sold in the United States is not the orange field pumpkin people carve. It is a tan-skinned variety in the same species that is denser, sweeter and far less watery, and major producers grow proprietary strains of it. This is entirely legal and makes a better pie, because carving pumpkins are stringy and full of water. Anyone who has made a pie from a jack-o'-lantern and found it thin and bland has run into exactly this.

The pie itself is a baked custard, which decides how it should be treated. Eggs set it, and overbaking is what makes a filling crack down the middle or turn grainy and weep. The pie should come out while the center still wobbles as a single mass, because residual heat finishes the job as it cools. Evaporated milk appears in most standard recipes because it carries less water than fresh milk and gives a firmer, richer set.

The crust needs its own attention, since a wet custard poured into raw pastry produces the soggy bottom the dish is notorious for.

How to take part

• Use canned pumpkin without apology. It is the better ingredient here.
• Blind-bake the shell before filling it.
• Pull the pie while the middle still wobbles. This is the whole technique.
• Bloom the spices in the warm custard rather than tipping them into the cold mix.
• Cool it completely before slicing, ideally for several hours.