A Yummy Pumpkin Pie From Very Processed Ingredients

I bought a can of Libby's pumpkin purée more or less a year ago, but never quite remembered to use it. Finnish Father's Day, which falls on the second Sunday of November, was a little while ago, and I wanted to bring something easy yet tasty for the Sunday meal's dessert. I remembered the pumpkin can and read the back label, which had a pie recipe on it. Since I happened to have all the ingredients at hand, and didn't have the energy to google for the ultimate pumpkin pie recipe that takes forever to make and requires three trips to specialty stores for exotic spices, I decided to give the can's recipe a go. This is what the label said, word for word:

This is the traditional holiday pumpkin pie. This classic recipe has been on LIBBY'S Pumpkin labels since 1950. This pie is easy to prepare and even easier to enjoy. Just mix, pour, bake for a delicious homemade tradition.

the label of a can of Libby's pumpkin

The processed ingredients in the title are meant quite literally, as the pumpkin comes out of a can, the milk comes out of a can and the pie shell can be a ready-made one too. The only work of my own is beating the eggs and measuring the spices. The filling is really a custard, in which the eggs set in the oven and bind the pumpkin and milk together. That is why you test it with a knife, and when a knife pushed in near the centre comes out clean, the filling has set and won't run any more. The can doesn't say what kind of pumpkin is inside, by the way. I googled it afterwards out of curiosity and found out that Libby's uses its own Dickinson variety, which is closer to a butternut squash than to a Halloween pumpkin.

And sure enough, the outcome was delicious. For all non-Americans, the taste is really close to gingerbread. No wonder, as cinnamon, ginger and cloves are the same spices that go into a Finnish gingerbread dough. Yet the consistency is soft and luscious, just like when you soak a handful of gingerbread in a glass of milk and spoon them up as a soggy mess, one of my favourite childhood memories... Thin Finnish gingerbread biscuits go soft in milk in a few seconds, and the last crumbs always stay at the bottom of the glass.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, and there pumpkin pie is as much a part of Thanksgiving as the star-shaped plum pastry is of a Finnish Christmas. When I lived in Boston it turned up every November on the same dessert tables where carrot cake, another of my American favourites, stood all year round, even at Chinese and Japanese buffets. So here you go, LIBBY'S Famous Pumpkin Pie, straight from the can's label.