Oh, man - us foodies have been waiting all year for this holiday. Lots of homemade, once-a-year dishes to share with family and friends. It’s a time of giving thanks for our many blessings, sharing hugs and laughs, and discussing important issues of the day.
Like... Am I having pie or cake on Thanksgiving?
I read a ton of cooking magazines and usually, a turkey is on the cover in November. But this month, it’s cakes and pies, tempting us to choose one.
Choose? How silly. We can have both. My childhood home had both - grandmother’s cakes, mom’s pies. My grandmother’s cakes were 4-layers, light and fluffy, with perfectly swirled frosting that had those wispy tips. Someone snuck in a cheesecake one year and it became a tradition – and now one of my favorites.
Can you have cupcakes at thanksgiving or is that a violation? What about mincemeat pie? I had it once – I thought it would have meat in it, but it didn’t. The ‘Old-Time” pies had minced round steak - but fortunately, the person who made the pie I ate left out the meat. Instead, it was full of chopped dried fruit, cooked in brown sugar, bourbon, and orange juice with warm spices. Quite yummy as I recall.
Okay, you might make the argument that pie is the official thanksgiving dessert. But what kind? Pumpkin? Pecan? – Or something new?
Some History
I didn’t have pumpkin pie until I was in my 20s, as sweet potato pie was the family pie. European settlers brought sweet potatoes to the America’s in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is believed that in trying to replicate carrot pie for the settlers, a popular pie then, enslaved Africans learned to cook sweet potatoes and substituted one orange sweet item for another – thus creating sweet potato pie.
As for pumpkins, they were first cultivated in Central America around 5,500 B.C. and one of the foods the first European explorers brought back from the New World. Pumpkins became part of England’s highly-developed pie-making culture, and when the Pilgrims arrived in America in 1620, they recognized the pumpkins at the table of the Wampanoag Confederacy – the Indigenous people of what is now southeastern Massachusetts.
Of course, we wouldn’t recognize the original pumpkin pies. Sometimes crust wasn’t necessary – a hollowed-out pumpkin with spiced, sweetened milk cooked directly over fire was one version, or the pumpkin was boiled in milk and strained into the crust.
In the mid-19th century, pumpkin pie rose to significance when Sarah Hale, an abolitionist, who worked to have Thanksgiving declared a national holiday, featured the pie in 1827 in the anti-slavery novel Northwood. After Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, pumpkin pie extended its national reach, and by 1919, Libby’s meat-canning company of Chicago introduced canned pumpkin, replacing the need for roasting and straining – and thank goodness!
Are you having the true American invention – pecan pie – that didn’t exist before 1900, or apple something – like pie, cake, or dumplings? Are you going with traditional desserts, or is something new on the menu? I recently read suggestions for new Thanksgiving traditions like a Cranberry Citrus Meringue Pie - yes, cranberries make sense – Butterscotch Banana Cream Pie, and Coconut Caramel Tart.
Scott Horsley, NPR’s chief economic correspondent, told me that NPR also means “No Pie Refused” - so I would do what Scott says and eat any pie offered.
They all sound good, don’t they? It’s a once-a-year thing, so go ahead and have it all. Whatever the dessert, the day will be wonderful. Because any day that starts with a parade – and a football game - is a great day!
Resources
https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-pumpkin-pie
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/22/1214255388/pumpkin-pie-sweet-potato-pie-thanksgiving-history
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/dining/thanksgiving-pies.html
