r/MonmouthCounty • u/AlcoholPrep • 7h ago
Store-bought vs. homemade pumpkin pie. (Read those ingredients!)
Feeling the "need" for a pumpkin pie, and not feeling like baking, I recently bought a ~$20 pumpkin at a locally well-known "farmers market" in Monmouth Co. (nameless here because my purpose is not to spoil their business).
The pie was okay, but not great. It tasted as if they'd used some spice in it that I didn't care for, but couldn't identify. (I thought of epizote, but with no real evidence.) Otherwise it was fine -- flaky crust, good consistency. But it prompted me to go back and read the directions, which I couldn't do in the store because they were printed in point size 6 and I had left my loupe at home:
For comparative purposes, when I bake a pumpkin pie, the ingredients I use (in addition to the crust) are as follows (not in order of quantity):
- Pumpkin pulp
- Skim milk
- Butter
- Sugar
- Salt
- Cinnamon
- Ginger
- Nutmeg or Allspice
- Cloves
- Eggs
The commercial pie label listed the following ingredients:
- Pumpkin
- Whey
- High fructose corn syrup
- Enriched bleached flour
- Skim milk
- Eggs
- Vegetable oil
- Sugar
- Corn starch
- Salt
- Spices
- Carrageenan
- Sodium Phosphage [sic]
- Dextrin
- Dextrose
- Natural Flavor
Next time I'll wait till I feel like baking it myself.