[Sca-cooks] Don't Trust the Internet!

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings!  While being a bit at loose ends at my son's home in Austin, I decided to "google" my name again since he has broadband and I have dial-up at home.  What a surprise to find that I'm older than I thought!  There are several repetitions of the "history", below on various people's web sites, but I thought you might want to know that according to the internet, I'm actually a "period person"!  Here's the main article:

A brief history of pumpkin pie

As early as 1621, early American settlers made pumpkin pie by filling a hollowed out shell with milk, honey and spices, then baking it in hot ashes. The Native Americans brought pumpkins as gifts to the first settlers, and taught them the many uses for the pumpkin. This is what developed into pumpkin pie about 50 years after the first Thanksgiving in America.

By 1671, early settlers of New England brought English cookery and English cookbooks with them to the new world. "The Compleat Cook," by Dame Alys Katharine of Ashthorne Glen (Elise Fleming), was one of the cookbooks used in Plymouth Colony that actually had a recipe for pumpkin pie.

It was not until 1796 that a truly American cookbook, Amelia Simmons' "American Cookery," was published. It was the first American cookbook written and published in America, and the first cook book that developed recipes for foods native to America. Her pumpkin puddings were baked in a crust and similar to present day pumpkin pies.

(c) 2004 Linda Stradley, whatscookingamerica.net.

Alys Katharine, not really that old!