Thursday, November 19, 2009

Traditional pumpkin pie - Vintage Recipe Thursday

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?


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Thanksgiving is next Thursday, so let's take a one-week hiatus from Vintage Recipe Thursday to celebrate this great holiday with family and friends. I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving with great food, great company, and great fun and entertainment.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Vintage Recipe Thursday will resume the following Thursday, on December 3!

In anticipation for Thanksgiving, I am sharing a traditional pumpkin pie. It is easy. The housewife who owned this book was a messy cook, and I can tell she loved to use this cookbook. The cookbook is well-worn, and there are many stains throughout. But the page for pumpkin pie is stained and splattered more than the rest, even partially torn. As I have an active imagination, I can picture her in her kitchen preparing these delicious dishes for Thanksgiving through the decades. I can see her in the early '40s as a young newlywed, hosting her first Thanksgiving. Is she nervous, or already a seasoned cook having helped her mother and taken home economics classes? I see her in the '50s and '60s, her children at her apron strings watching every movement she makes, asking more questions than parents have answers for.

I see her in the '70s and '80s still preparing family favorites, perhaps to bring to her grown children's homes, perhaps to teach another generation how to cook. I can see her in the '90s and the early part of this new century. The decades have flown by, her well-loved cookbook has earned as many scars and wrinkles as she has. They have been earned. Each one is a sign of dedication and love.

It is time for the book to find a new owner. Did she give it to the Friends of the Library herself, now that she no longer cooks, so that a new owner would cherish it as much as she had for some 60 years? Or did her children simply discard some old, stained book, not realizing or caring what a family treasure it was?

Either way, it came into my hands, and I am thankful for it. It is filled with wonderful recipes from housewives across the country, all family-favorites, many prize-winners, and I have yet to find one our family did not enjoy. It is filled with a soul. These vintage pages speak to me from one housewife to another, across the miles, and across time. I treasure them as I imagine the original owner treasured them. They remind me of times past, and yet of the present too. Past and present intertwining into one. They remind me of families, of how generations pass, how children grow, and how they have children of their own. Time flies by, and yet it almost stands still, repeating itself over and over again.

Pumpkin Pie - Home Shopper/Flickr
Pumpkin Pie
1 1/2 cups cooked pumpkin, fresh or canned
1 cup rich milk
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon butter

Combine ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (425 F.) about 25 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream. If desired, 1/2 cup raisins may be added to pumpkin filling. Virginia Cooper, New Orleans, La.



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4 comments:

  1. We are having a bit of a pot luck dinner, and someone else is in charge of pies... Sure hope they read this recipe

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  2. That sounds like a good one for us to bake.We could bring it to my wife's parents for Thanksgiving. Have a good day.See you next month.

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  3. Another wonderful recipe to add to my ever growing recipe file! Thanks for sharing. :)

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