Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1883 — An American Institution. [ARTICLE]

An American Institution.

The hotel or restaurant pumpkin pie is not the simon pure article. It has liad too many foreign airs added to it. It may be good, and may pass for what it is intended, but it can’t hold a candle to the pumpkin pie our mothers and grandmothers made. Just look at the difference in the two brands, ilother’s had a nice short crust with an edge about an inch deep and in this was a plump measure of pumpkin “pulp” mixed with nice fresh eggs, milk and just enough spice to give it flavor. It was a picture of a blooming, healthy pie. It makes a man’s mouth water to think of it. The store kind of pumpkin pie has a sort of a sickly second cousin countenance and is scarcely over an eighth of an inch thick, with a crust on the bottom that almost breaks a tin? ner’s shears to cut it. As for taste, that has to be imagined, as it is a sort of go-as-you-please flavor between tan bark and cinnamon. Then again, one hundred store pies will be made out of an ordinary twenty cent pumpkin. Each pie is cut into eight pieces about the size pf two. fingers, which sell for 5 cents each. This brings 40 cents for a pie, or S4O for the product of the tov - * Tlfc&k tlto ■ s tose k eepijr $39.80 profit on his pumpkin, and as the crust is thin with no shortening in it, 80 cents ought to cover this cost, action! A slice of mother’s pumpkin pie the size of your two hands, that’s the regulation cut in home-made pie, and an inch and a half thick contains more real' pie than a dozen store pies, and there is no danger of teouble from indigestion after eating it. There should be some ’’ action taken by life Legislatures to prevent the degeneration of this great American institution —the pumpkin pie. If this is not done, future generations will read in history of a dish now so highly prized by patriotic citizens and grieve to think that the building of the pumpkin pie of their forefathers is a lost art.- -Peck's Sun.