Ellen Byron’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie Recipe

Ellen Byron’s Vintage Cookbook Mystery series features suspenseful mysteries, delightful humor, and delicious recipes inspired by vintage cookbooks. This recipe for Pumpkin Chiffon Pie is featured in French Quarter Fright Night, the third book in the series.

Recipe Note From Ellen Byron

Recipe inspired by Cookbook: Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home: Famous Recipes, A Duncan Hines Book (1948 ed.)

Unlike Betty Crocker, a fictional character created in 1921 for a Saturday Evening Post contest, Duncan Hines was a real person: a traveling salesman who compiled a list of restaurants he’d eat at during his travels that he shared with friends. This turned into a book and a food column. Eventually, he licensed his name for baked goods; hence, the Duncan Hines mixes we know today.

This recipe for Pumpkin Chiffon Pie is from a long-gone restaurant called The Dinner Bell in Oakland, CA. I was fascinated by the confusing way the recipe is laid out in the book: i.e., a bunch of ingredients on the left, then directions telling you to “put in double boiler,” leaving the reader to decipher exactly what goes into the double boiler. And a “baked pie shell” isn’t even included in the ingredients! Apparently, this isn’t unusual for recipes from past decades, but it was new to me.

I’ve simplified the directions and made sure all necessary ingredients are listed.

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown sugar

• 3 eggs, separated

• 1 and 1/4 cup pumpkin

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp. ginger

• 1/4 tsp. allspice

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• 1 T. gelatin

• 1/4 cup cold water

• 2 T. sugar

• 10” baked pie shell

Directions

Place brown sugar, egg yolks, pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and salt in a double boiler. Mix ingredients and cook until the mixture begins to thicken, then turn off heat.

Soak the gelatin in the cold water for five minutes. Add it to the hot mixture, stir until it’s thoroughly dissolved, and cool.

Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then beat the sugar into the egg whites. Fold the egg whites into the cooled mixture.

Pour into the baked pie shell and chill. Serve garnished with whipped cream.

Servings: 6-8.

About the Vintage Cookbook Mysteries

The Vintage Cookbook Mysteries are really fun reads. They are excellent whodunnits set in New Orleans. The characters are well-drawn and interesting, the humor is exceptionally well-written, and the recipes at the end are fantastic!

Ellen’s other mystery series are just as good. They include the:

• Cajun Country Mysteries

• Golden Motel Mysteries

• Catering Hall Mysteries (written as Maria DiRico)

Ellen’s books are available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and other booksellers.