The First Custard-Style Pumpkin Pie Was Featured In This Classic American Cookbook

There may not be any dessert that screams "America" more than a classic pumpkin pie. The celebrated fall staple has become synonymous with good old-fashioned American home cooking over the years, and it's been gracing bakery windows and Thanksgiving tables for as long as anyone can remember. It's impossible to trace exactly where the dish came from, but we do know which cookbook may have been the first to feature the first custard-style one: "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons.

Published in 1796, "American Cookery" is believed to be the first cookbook written by an American author. Unlike the British cookbooks available at the time, Simmons' dishes focused on local ingredients like cornmeal and squash. One of the recipes featured was for "pompkin pudding," which featured stewed pumpkin, cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, mace, and ginger, all baked in a crust for 45 minutes.

The English were already making pies with pumpkin in them at this time, but the vegetable was sliced and stacked, rather than mashed, and there was a layer of crust baked on top. It's believed that the early colonists of New England created the custard-style filling that Simmons refers to in her book, and many attribute "American Cookery" as being the first official source for such a recipe.

Simmons actually published two different "pompkin" pudding recipes at the time. The second one utilizes molasses instead of sugar, and it's baked for one hour. It also doesn't call for any lattice topping, like the first version does, so it's probably more similar to the pumpkin pies a lot of us make today. But as with the first recipe, Simmons didn't give any measurements for the spices or sweeteners, which makes things interesting for modern bakers.

Many have tried to recreate both recipes at home, and some say that while the consistency is a little thinner than what they're used to, the taste is very similar. Simmons uses a lot of dairy and eggs in her recipe, so the filling is quite wet, and the molasses version is also less sweet due to the lack of sugar. But people love how the spices shine through. Nowadays, there's no shortage of pumpkin pie recipes, but Simmons' classic take proves that the basics have pretty much stayed the same.

Mary Randolph is thought to have been the first to add brandy to the dish in 1824, and canned pumpkin changed everything in the 1920s. Pumpkin pie spice eventually came clambering along a few decades later, along with ready-made grocery pies. But the traditional custard style continues to remain popular, and seeing as it's been associated with Thanksgiving since it became a national holiday in 1863, it probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon.