Tarte à la Citrouille - Pumpkin Pie

…highly esteemed by the Americans

To make a tart, that is a courage to man or woman. - Thomas Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, 1587

It’s quite mind boggling to think that something so American as the pumpkin pie was first made in France. By a French chef.

We know the pumpkin, citrouille or potiron or courge, the squash, came to France in the 16th century, traveling from Central America and the New World to the European continent. “When the Pilgrims sailed for America on the Mayflower in 1620, it’s likely some of them were as familiar with pumpkins as the Wampanoag, who helped them survive their first year at Plymouth Colony, were.” (History.com, November 18, 2022) One could think that the pumpkin pie would have been a thing in England before traveling to France, but it seems to have worked the other way around.

Sieur Pierre de la Varenne wrote Le Cuisinier François in 1651. Le Cuisinier François was a remarkable and revolutionary book, the first French cookbook of the modern era, coming out of the Middle Ages and codifying the innovations and advances that had been made in cooking, becoming one of the most influential cookbooks of its time. It was the first cookbook in France to contain modern, recognisable recipes. La Varenne included what is thought to be the first written recipe for a pumpkin pie, Tourte de Citrouille. His recipe was quite simple and quite modern, much like we still see today: “Pumpkin is boiled in milk to make a thick purée. Sugar, butter, a little salt, and, if you’d like, ground almonds, are added. It should be very delicate. Pour into a pie shell and bake. Serve dusted with sugar.”

La Varenne’s pastry cookbook La Pastissier François, published 2 years later, devotes 4 pages to Pumpkin, Squash, or Melon Tart, to which he now suggests adding, if one likes, cinnamon, dried currants, lemon zest, and either pastry cream, egg yolks, white bread, or crushed macarons or cookies. This tart has both a bottom and top crust.

The earliest recipes found in English cookbooks appear almost 10 years later.

Robert May’s famous English cookery book The Accomplisht Cook, published in 1660, has a rather complex recipe for Pumpion Pie, pumpion or pompion being an early word for this type of squash in both countries, in which slices of pumpkin are fried - possibly sautéed or even just cooked - with fresh herbs, thyme, rosemary, and marjoram, and spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and cloves, beaten eggs and sugar. The pie - it’s not clear if this is a pie dish or a pastry (pie) crust - is filled with this mixture, dried currants, and thinly-sliced rounds of apple, and dotted with butter. When baked, the cook is instructed to “cut up the lid” - possibly a top crust - and “put it in” (the pie) and top it all with a curious curdled concoction of egg yolks beaten with white wine or verjuice before serving. Hannah Wooley includes the exact same recipe, word for word, in her 1673 book The Gentlewomans Companion, or, A Guide to the Female Sex.

It’s important to note that Pierre de la Varenne’s Le Cuisinier François was translated into English for the British market in 1653, so it is, after all, most likely that the French invented this treat and presented it to the English.

And, evidently, much, much later, it appeared across the vast ocean.

Back in America, where pumpkins originated, Amelia Simmons includes 2 variations of pumpkin (pompkin) pie in her 1796 American Cookery, the first published American cookbook. The first has the stewed and strained pumpkin blended with cream, eggs, sugar, mace, nutmeg, and ginger, “laid into a paste” with a “dough spur” which is “crossed and chequered” then “baked in dishes”. The second blends the pumpkin purée with milk, eggs, molasses, allspice, and ginger, and “baked in a crust”.

So, it does seem that pumpkin pie, that all-American specialty of Thanksgiving, originated in France, traveled to England, and finally sailed over with the British to those United States.

It has long been said that Pierre de la Varenne made the first pumpkin pie. Or was at least the first to record the recipe in a cookbook. But did he really? Doing a bit of detective work, one discovers Jean-Antoine Huguetan’s tome Le Thresor de Santé (“written by one of the most celebrated and famous doctors of the century” quote unquote) published in 1607 which contains a recipe for courge or corde en tartre: “We also use squash for tarts - mashed and boiled in milk or in a good broth (bouillon), with fromage fin (possibly a creamy cheese or dairy product like today’s fromage blanc or crème fraîche), kidney fat or grease, or with butter and sugar, a little ginger and cinnamon, egg yolks, and milk in which saffron has been dissolved. The mixture is then put in the tart. In place of a top crust (a crust on top), (one can place) bay leaves. We serve it with sugar and rose water. We also make donuts with it.” The sweet pie, with the addition of cinnamon and ginger, is very similar to what we make today.

Just a few years earlier, Lancelot de Casteau offers quite a number of recipes for tourtes, both savoury and sweet, in his 1604 cookbook Ouverture de Cuisine. While there are none for pumpkin pie, whether citrouille or courge, he has one for tourte de melon à la Romaine, Roman melon tourte or tart: After cleaning the melon well “inside and out” it is chopped very finely, mixed with a fatty cheese, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and one should then “make a tourte like the others” meaning, as he instructs in his first recipe for a tourte, the filling is placed between two pastry crusts and baked.

It’s curious to note that La Varenne also has a recipe for tourte de melon, baking his mix of grated melon, melted butter, sugar, salt, a touch of pepper, and a macaron only in a bottom crust.

So baking with these new and strange beasts, the family of pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, and pompions was fairly common at this period in time, quite soon after they arrived in France. L'Agriculture et Maison Rustique by one M. Charles Estienne, written in 1564, lists melons and pompons, two sorts of squash, together in once section, followed closely by cucumbers and pumpkins. The 1845 La Maison de Campagne by Aglaé Adanson mentions a “courge-melon” explaining that a particular cake be made with either “citrouille (pumpkin), giraumon (turban squash), or courge-melon (melon-squash)” so it might be closer to a squash than today’s melon as we know it is. And evidently often treated in the kitchen in much the same manner.

And then the idea of making a pie or tart with pumpkin seems to vanish, just go out of style. While cookbook authors continue to talk about using this vegetable/fruit in soups, fricassees, breads, and eventually purées and gratins, pies seems to disappear for quite a long time, only popping up again in the mid-19th century. When suddenly, the French are discovering how tasty this old treat can be.

“My faith, I said. I'm going to do an experiment with one of these pumpkins that I was tired of watering to make it grow bigger,” wrote Auguste Colombié in La Patisserie Bourgeoise in 1906. “Well! this experiment that started with a laugh, is going to have a marvellous result: the people who make it after me won't be able to believe their tongues, when they inform them it's exquisite, cheap and very healthy.” He instructs one to trim the pumpkin (yellow, orange, or red flesh) into large chunks, place in a pot, and carry it to the baker or to the cook just as lunch is finished cooking to put in the oven to slowly bake in the gentle, even heat. He then makes a pie crust; the pumpkin pulp, now cooked and extremely well drained, is mixed with sugar, flour, eggs, milk, salt, lemon zest. The filling placed in the pie shell and baked.

“This delicacy is highly esteemed by the Americans who call it ‘Pumpkin tart’,” explain Emile Darenne et Emile Duval in their 1909 Traité de Pâtisserie Moderne. Darenne and Duval instruct one to chop the flesh into tiny pieces which are placed in a pie dish - which, in America, they explain, is called a ‘plat à paille’ - literally “straw dish” but let’s assume Darenne and Duval meant “pie (paille) plate” which I find hysterical. One then dusts the chunks of pumpkin with lots of sugar (“saupoudrer très fort”) and fine lemon zest; one then pours on a half a cup of either water or white wine. The pie dish is then trimmed or edged with a band of pastry; a large round of pastry is then placed atop the filling to completely cover the pie, the edges pressed onto the strip around the rim. “To give this tart a more decorative look, scallop the edges with a pastry cutter.” At the end of baking, the top crust is dusted with sugar and popped back into the oven for a few minutes to form an icy or crisp layer.`

“The squash tart or flan - la tarte ou flan à la courge - is a Burgundian pastry, a common one, it's true, but very widespread and actually quite good in the end.” (La Feuille du Cultivateur: Practical Agriculture Journal, 1856)

And yet the pumpkin pie, while “highly esteemed by the Americans”, and “exquisite, cheap and very healthy”, never really took off in France, seemingly slightly more popular in agricultural journals and women’s magazine than in cookbooks. One does find it popping up as a specialty in the Burgundy region, often a savory version of the pumpkin pie, but even in France it is now considered an American dessert.

Marie-Claire, dir. Jean Prouvost, 20 September 1941

I grow pumpkins, much more for the pleasure of looking at them than for their intrinsic value. We put pumpkin in apple pie, but I have to admit that the pie is better when there are only apples. (Alfred Smee, Mon Jardin, 1876, French translation of the English My Garden: Its Plan and Culture, 1872).

Pumpkin pie, we must admit, is a love-it-or-hate-it dessert, an acquired taste. Personally, I love it, and my recipe is simple enough that I can eat it all throughout the Autumn, not just on Thanksgiving. Sometimes I eat it as a vegetable. And strange taste or exquisite, it is oh so addictive, probably because of the texture, dense and creamy. Or probably because of the impossible amounts of whipped cream one usually tops it with.

My Pumpkin Pie

I prefer using a variety of pumpkin like courge musquée or crookneck pumpkin. This time I used a potimarron or red kuru squash - which my son uses - but I didn’t like it as much; the flesh wasn’t as sweet and the texture of the pie was a bit different. But use whatever pie pumpkins you can find in your market or supermarket - Cinderella, mystic pie, crookneck, Muscade de Provence - just please DO NOT used canned. Once you taste a pumpkin pie made with real pumpkin, you will never go back. And preparing it is so easy!

You will need a 9-inch (24-cm) pie plate or dish (I prefer glass/Pyrex).

Uncooked sweet pastry pie shell (recipe below)

2 cups packed fresh pumpkin purée (I use a glass liquid measuring cup)

2 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons or more (to taste) ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 ½ cups (350/375 ml) milk (whole or low fat)

½ cup (125 ml) pure maple syrup

Prepare the sweet pastry crust (or use your own or store-bought)

1 ¼ cups (170 grams) flour

¼ cup (50 grams) sugar

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ cup (25 grams) finely ground almonds or hazelnuts

7 tablespoons (100 grams) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

1 egg, lightly beaten

Lightly butter a 9-inch (24-cm) pie plate or dish (I prefer glass/Pyrex), getting into the corners and grooves (if fluted) well.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and ground nuts in a mixing bowl. Using only your thumbs and fingertips, rub the butter cubes into the flour until the consistency of damp sand and there are no more large chunks of butter. With a fork, vigorously stir in the lightly beaten egg until all the dry ingredients are moistened and a dough starts to form. Scrape and gather the dough together into a ball and place on a well-floured surface. Using the heel of one hand, smear the dough little by little away from you in quick, hard strokes in order to make sure that all of the butter is blended in well. Scrape up the dough together, re-flour the surface lightly and work/knead very briefly and quickly until you have a smooth, homogenous dough.

On a well-floured surface, roll out the dough until its about an inch or so wider all around than the bottom of the pie dish. Gently and lightly roll the dough around your rolling pin, lift the dough and unroll it onto your pie dish. Carefully fit the dough into the pie dish, making sure it is well fitted into the corners and pressed into the sides. Trim.

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).

Lightly butter a pie plate and line with the uncooked sweet pastry pie dough or pastry dough or your choice, trimming off any excess dough. Prick lightly with a fork. Place in the refrigerator while your oven preheats and you prepare the filling.

Purée the pumpkin by cubing the pumpkin flesh and putting it in a large pot with about an inch or two of water. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover tightly, and let steam until very soft; check the pumpkin often, stirring the pumpkin up and around for even cooking. Once the pumpkin is really soft, fork soft, pour it into a colander set in the sink and let drain really well, allowing it to cool at least slightly. Purée and measure, packing it into a glass measuring cup, draining any excess water if necessary.

Put the purée into a large bowl. Using a whisk or a wooden spoon, stir in the flour, spices, and salt until well blended. Whisk or beat in the eggs, or if the purée is still hot, add just enough milk to cool it a bit then stir in the eggs quickly. Add the milk and maple syrup and stir everything together until very well blended. If your pumpkin isn’t very sweet, add a bit more maple syrup. Pour the pumpkin filling into the pie shell until filled about half way. Transfer the pie onto the rack of the pre-heated oven and then carefully pour the rest of the filling into the shell up to the rim (this should avoid sloshing it onto the floor while carrying it to the oven. Just a trick.)

Let cook about 40 minutes or until the center is just set and the shell is browned around the edges and underneath.

Remove the pie to a cooling rack to cool.

Serve with plenty of whipped cream.

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