Happy Thanksgiving: My grandma’s pumpkin pie

This is a recipe card from the 1960s or early 1970s with my grandmother’s pumpkin pie recipe. I make this recipe at least once a year, and it’s always very good. You can see it’s been spilled on a few times! None of that evaporated milk stuff for Grandma — this uses none of it, and just has you scald the milk. And none of those premixed “pumpkin pie spices”! You can mix your own.

Pumpkin Pie
Serves 6
Recipe from the kitchen of Mom

1 recipe pie crust
2 c. pumpkin – add 2 eggs beaten slightly – Add
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ginger
1/4 t. cloves
1/2 t. salt
Add 1 c. scalded milk. Pour into shell and bake at
450F – 10 min.
350F – 30 min.

For 2 pies use large can pumpkin and double everything else.

I suppose it could be written a little more clearly. I’d probably edit it to read as follows:

Pumpkin Pie
Serves 6
Recipe from the kitchen of Mom
Edited by Wendi

2 c. (one small can) pumpkin
2 eggs, beaten slightly
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ginger
1/4 t. cloves
1/2 t. salt
1 c. scalded milk
1 recipe pie crust

Preheat oven to 450F.
Stir beaten eggs into pumpkin.
Add dry ingredients (sugar, spices, salt) and mix well.
Stir in scalded milk until mixture is smooth.
Pour into shell and bake at 450F for 10 minutes,
then lower the oven temperature to 350F and continue cooking for 30 more minutes.

Pie is ready to serve when a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

For 2 pies, use a large can of pumpkin and double everything else.

Pumpkin pie isn’t really a recipe that needs resurrecting — people eat it every Thanksgiving. It hasn’t lost any popularity. But most recipes you see these days call for evaporated milk, so perhaps this version with plain milk will interest some of you. (I’ve used this recipe with soy milk, incidentally — and it was delicious.)

The “Silent Hostess”

The vintage-style stove was only the beginning of my kitchen’s transformation. With the cast-iron stove, came a farmhouse sink, wooden countertops, red Marmoleum floors, and a restored faux-tile wall. How could we put a modern stainless steel — or even white — fridge into what was turning into a relatively period kitchen?

We couldn’t. Our fridge is now one of these:

(Photo by Phil Urwin)

…a late 1920s or possibly early 1930s GE Monitor Top refrigerator, the fridge that made it “safe to be hungry.” Seven cubic feet of frosty cold storage, and I do mean frosty. We have to defrost frequently, though it’s not terribly difficult.

For most people who acquired one of these Monitor Tops when they were new, it was the first electric refrigerator they ever owned. Even if they had an ice box before, they couldn’t have used it the same way a refrigerator would be used; ice boxes weren’t good at keeping consistent low temperatures. They certainly couldn’t have easily made ice cubes to cool their drinks.

General Electric came to the rescue with cookbooks/manuals like this one:

This “Silent Hostess” Treasure Book was published by GE in 1930, and includes illustrations, recipes, and instructions on how to properly use (and defrost) a Monitor Top refrigerator (though they never use that phrase). Read More