Friday's Unscientific Poll: Pie (sweet)

[nanila]

Poll #17125 Pie (sweet)

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

View Respondents

Pecan or pumpkin?

View Answers

Pecan!
26 (56.5%)

Pumpkin!
20 (43.5%)

Whipped cream?

View Answers

The stuff from the can is fine
20 (36.4%)

Freshly made please
35 (63.6%)

Change "whipped" to "ice" and I'll think about it
19 (34.5%)

No thank you
3 (5.5%)

Ticky?

View Answers

I reject the false binary imposed upon me by the first question.
25 (45.5%)

I have eaten too much pie
6 (10.9%)

I would like some pie
37 (67.3%)

Ticky!
27 (49.1%)

Comments

[soliano]

Coming from the South, it is hard for me to actually choose between pumpkin and pecan. But Pumpkin narrowly wins out. (probably because we make those in pairs so I get double the yum.)

[nanila]

I don't think I had pecan until I was an adult! Pumpkin was the traditional one in my family. So I'm most firmly attached to pumpkin.

[cmcmck]

Both of those would be way too sweet for my taste!

[nanila]

Heh. It has taken me a long time to get the bloke to accept that sweet pies are a thing. :P

[yvi]

I... Have never eaten any pie.

(or, at least pecan or pumpkin. In Germany, we eat cake. So apple pie is a thing, but other pie is strange)

[nanila]

Come to my house on American Thanksgiving! We will give you sweet pie!

[fadedwings]

I make pecan pumpkin pie every year...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128292471@N04/23244871241/in/dateposted-public/

before I started making this, I was never a pie person at all.

[nanila]

GENIUS! I shall have to try that.

[redbird]

Pecan is okay, but I prefer fruit pies—apple, cherry, blueberry, peach, or mixed berry. (I had a nice blackberry and blueberry pie last weekend; our pie woman uses frozen berries this time of year.)

Our family Thanksgiving tradition (we've done it several times in a row) is an apple, pear, and cranberry crisp. This started because it's a lot easier to make a good non-dairy, non-lard crisp topping than a good non-dairy, non-lard pie crust. (I eat dairy, but adrian_turtle doesn't.)

[nanila]

Oh, that wounds lovely. I like the idea of adding cranberries for a bit of a tart edge. Nice.

[hilarita]

I had pumpkin pie for the first time earlier this year, and I really wasn't impressed. You need so much sugar and spice to make up for the essential pumpkinness of the filling, it's a bit bland and oversugary at the same time. If one is desperate to do something with pumpkin guts, I recommend sticking it in stew, where it can join other dubious vegetabular lumps, such as swede...

I feel that custard is missing as a pie soggifier - I realise it doesn't go well with pumpkin or pecan, but does go well with fruit pies and is nice and warming at this time of year.*

*Spot all the techniques Britons have adopted to deal with their fucking freezing houses...

[nanila]

My palate (and I expect that of a lot of Americans) is set to tolerate a much higher level of sweetness than most British people's palates. If you think pumpkin pie is sweet, you should try the sweet potato with marshmallow topping that's a staple of many American Thanksgiving tables! I loved it as a kid, but it's almost too sweet for me as an adult. Almost - I can cope with it by channeling my inner five-year-old. :)

[doccy]

Write-in vote: Please change the forced "pecan/pumpkin" binary to ticky boxes, because I love pie and I love ticky.

[nanila]

Yes, it really should be. BECAUSE PIE!

[chickenfeet]

Steak and kidney

[nanila]

Also delicious! But savoury.

I still remember encountering savoury pie for the first time after I moved to London. It was a chicken and leek pie and it was AMAZING after a long cold walk in November.

[omnipotent]

I do not like anything pumpkin flavored, but my grandmother's pecan pie was the bomb.

[nanila]

I didn't encounter pecan pie until I was an adult. Is it more of a Southern thing? One of my first flatmates at uni introduced me to it and she was from South Carolina.

Pecan pie is delicious.

PIE

[omnipotent]

It is definitely considered a staple of Southern cuisine! I am kicking myself that I never got my grandmother's recipe. D'oh! :p

[azurelunatic]

I fear I may be slightly allergic to pumpkins, therefore this was an easy choice!

[nanila]

Oh no! I'm sorry. But at least you can still have pecan, which is also delcious.

[angrboda]

Don't actually understand the attraction of pumpkin at all, really. For me it just tastes like soap.

Happen to be quite fond of pecans, though. They're all caramel-y in flavour and your fingers smell heavenly after handling them.

[nanila]

Pumpkin pie was traditional in my family so that's what draws me to it. Also, I love roasting pumpkin seeds. Boil them in heavily salted water for ten minutes then stick them under a hot grill for another ten. Delicious.

Agreed about pecans. Yum.

[shirou]

Sweet potato pie > pumpkin pie. I find pecan pie sickeningly sweet.

This year I made a free-form apple pie (my cookbook calls it a crostata; my family has always called it a galette) and a caramel tart.

[nanila]

I think that's the first time I've heard someone say that pecan pie was too sweet compared to pumpkin! You must've had an exceptionally sweet one.

CARAMEL TART. Mmmmmm.

[lark_ascends]

Neither for the first question.

[nanila]

If there is some alternative I can offer you that is not pie, I will gladly do so. :)

A few, biased, notes regarding pumpkin pies

[ed_rex]

• Contrary to popular belief, the extremely cheap and extremely large jack-o'-lantern pumpkins make brilliant pies. I am told the "pie pumpkins" are sweeter, but so what?


• Every recipe calls for too much sugar with the fruit. Try cutting it by a quarter; next year, try cutting the sugar content by a full third. You'll thank me for it; and


• along with the allspice and nutmeg, be generous with garam masala. I discovered that by accident, mistaking the latter for another spice entirely. The result was universally acknowledged to be the best pie all half-dozen or so sundry had ever tasted.

That's it. But really, I can't emphasize this enough: it hurts me to see so many jack-o'-lantern pumpkins just wasted. They're delicious!

Re: A few, biased, notes regarding pumpkin pies

[nanila]

I've made pie from jack-o'-lantern pumpkins and can't tell the difference. Surely all you have to do if you want a sweeter pumpkin pie is, um, add more sugar? Although this contradicts your next point. :P

Garam masala! I will add it to my next pumpkin pie.

Re: A few, biased, notes regarding pumpkin pies

[ed_rex]

I look forward to learning of your results. (Also, jack-o-lantern pumpkins make equally good soup. Damn but it bugs me to seem them go to waste! I'm a little crazed on the subject, I'm coming to realize.)