Making a Historic ‘Pomkin’ Pie From a 1796 Recipe

Max MillerofTasting History, who previously celebrated his own nuptials bymaking a wedding cake from 1769, shared the interesting history of the word pumpkin, noting that it started off very differently and evolved with the New World.

The French spelled it pompom whichcame from medieval French and then the Englishturned it into pompion or pumpion, and both ofthose words could really refer to all mannerof squash, or even melons sometimes. It wasn'tuntil later that they added the K to make pompkin,-kin being a suffix that could be used to denotea similarity between things.

This, of course, was a prelude to his preparing a recipe for pompkin" pie from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, one of the first known American cookbooks from 1796.

Her recipes arestill rather different than the modern pumpkinpie....First of all she calls it pompkinand you'll find that early on there are a lotof ways to spell the word pumpkin, The second major difference between this and amodern pie is that she sweetens it not with sugar but with molasses so it will be far less sweet than we're used to.