A traditional Thanksgiving spread feels incomplete without a pumpkin pie. For many, the holiday loses its essence without the quintessential pie. Pumpkin pies may be a Thanksgiving staple now, but their story is far more interesting than we realize.
Long before pumpkins began to symbolize fall and started featuring in our lattes and desserts, early American settlers were trying to figure out the vegetable and how best to cook it.
The version of the classic orange, silky custard we know today represents a long journey: how the vegetable gradually entered our kitchens, transforming into a holiday tradition, and reflecting the country’s evolving tastes.
The Long Tradition of Pumpkin Pies on Thanksgiving
How Did Pumpkins Enter Our Kitchens?
One of the earliest foods to be brought by European explorers from the New World, pumpkins were first cultivated in Central America around 5,500 B.C., according to History.com.
Indigenous people first used pumpkins for their seeds and to use as containers, according to the Smithsonian Magazine. The crop started spreading across the Americas.
Native Americans cooked pumpkin in many ways: roasting it, stewing it, drying it and pounding the dried version into a powder, or drying it into strips resembling a vegetable jerky.
The pumpkin’s first mention in Europe was in 1536, and over the next few decades, it began to be regularly cultivated in England, according to History.com. The English were already making sweet and savory pies by then, and it is likely that they started making pumpkin pies by then.
Back then, the pies would be filled with layers of sliced or fried pumpkins, along with sugar, spices, and apple slices and then baked between two crusts, according to a blog by the Library of Congress. It is likely that this version of the pumpkin pie was being cooked by early colonists as well.
When the Pilgrims sailed for America in 1620, they may have been familiar with pumpkins, like the Wampanoag, who helped them survive at Plymouth Colony, according to History.com.
The following year, when the 50 surviving colonists joined about 90 Wampanoag for a three-day celebration to mark a successful autumn harvest, it is likely that their feast included pumpkin in some form.
Evolution of Pumpkin Pie
The earliest versions of the pumpkin pie may have been slightly different from how we make it today.
According to a French cookbook from 1653, pumpkins were boiled in milk, strained, and then poured out on a crust, noted History.com.
English writer Hannah Woolley’s cookbook from 1670 instructed cooks to fill a pie with alternating layers of pumpkin and apple, spiced rosemary, sweet marjoram, and thyme.
Some recipes called for no crust. An Early New England recipe advocated filling a hollowed-out pumpkin with sweetened, spiced milk and cooking it directly over a fire, noted History.com.
Pumpkin pies began to appear at Thanksgiving meals by the early 18th century, as the holiday grew in regional significance in colonial New England.
Legend has it that pumpkins became such a holiday favorite that the Connecticut town of Colchester famously postponed its Thanksgiving feast for a week in 1705 because there wasn’t enough molasses to make pumpkin pie.
The familiar version of the pumpkin pie was first mentioned in Amelia Simmons’ cookbook, ‘American Cookery,’ in 1796, according to the Library of Congress. Simmons included two recipes for “pompkin” pudding, one of which is similar to the custard version we are familiar with.
These pies were made with stewed and strained pumpkins, eggs, cream or milk, sugar, and sometimes molasses. This was flavored with ginger, mace or nutmeg, and allspice, all the spices that were popular in the colonies back then.
This recipe was widely embraced by Americans. In ‘The Virginia Housewife’ in 1824, Mary Randolph mentioned a similar recipe, while adding “a wine glass of brandy,” according to the Library of Congress.
Randolph’s pumpkin pie included only a bottom crust and some decorative scraps of pastry on top.
In 1827, American author Eliza Leslie offered a “pumpkin pudding” recipe, which we now know as the one-crust or open-face pie, with a lining of “puff paste” instead of the “common paste” used for double-crusted pies.
Leslie’s pumpkin pudding recipe may have been cooked in a deep pie plate or a pudding pan rather than a shallow pie plate.
By the 19th century, pumpkin pies had become an integral part of Thanksgiving and were celebrated in poems and novels.
In 1842, Lydia Maria Child wrote her famous poem “Over the River and Through the Wood,” which ended with the line, “Hurra for the pumpkin pie!”
Makeover of the Humble Pie
When Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, the holiday’s traditions earned the attention of the country, extending the reach and popularity of pumpkin pies.
Over time, Thanksgiving not only became a holiday, but it also became a day to honor treasured family recipes and gather around the comfort of home-cooked meals.
However, while the holiday guarantees cherished family time, it also means a lot of cooking.
Around the turn of the 20th century, an interesting innovation made pumpkin pies more convenient to make – canned pumpkin. In 1929, the Chicago-headquartered Libby’s meat-canning company launched canned pumpkin, replacing the need to spend lengthy hours in the kitchen to stew and strain pumpkin all day.
By the early 1960s, Thanksgiving advertisements featured pumpkin pie mix, and bakery pies, as well as ready-to-serve frozen pies, according to the Library of Congress.
Such is the popularity of pumpkin pies and their seasonal significance that by the mid-20th century, pumpkin pie spice had become popular. The spice mix predominantly includes ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, cloves, and allspice, among other ingredients.
The connection between Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie is still going strong, with American farmers growing more than a billion pounds of pumpkin each year, according to the Smithsonian Magazine.
Pumpkin pies have now branched out into newer, creative versions of desserts and beverages, including pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie spiced coffee, and pumpkin whoopie pies.
Thanksgiving has grown and evolved over time, and so has the classic pumpkin pie, but the love for the dessert has not changed. A quintessential part of a holiday that gives thanks to the harvest and blessings of the year, the pumpkin pie mirrors the warmth of the holiday with its deep traditional roots and humble origins.
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