Open Source Pumpkin Pie

Mmmm… [Jim Petromyzon / Flickr]

I somehow manage to get this story a little wrong every time I tell it, but my great-great grandfather — or at least someone who worked in a his canning factory — was the first man to put pumpkin in a can. He figured pumpkin in a can would sell better if people had something to do with it, so he asked his customers to mail him recipes for pumpkin pie.

This recipe won. It is a hundred-year-old open source recipe for pumpkin pie. Don’t ask me for any more details, I just just swear it’s true. It’s below, as dictated to me this afternoon over the phone my aunt Judy.

I told my grandmother, by the way, that I was considering making this from scratch — boiling down the pumpkin — this thanksgiving. She told me that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard; the recipe was made for cans. We make it from cans.

1 1/4 cups of pumpkin

1 cup of milk

1/2 cup of granulated sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp of corn starch

1 tsp of cinnamon

1/4 tsp of ginger

dash of pepper

1/2 a teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of butter

Beat egg lightly, add pumpkin. Mix sugar, corn starch and spices, add to the pumpkin and the egg. Add milk and melted butter, pour in pie shell. Bake @ 450 for ten minutes. Reduce to 325 and bake from 30-35 minutes. Test with a knife.