People often wonder how a recipe is created. In fact, it is probably one of the most common questions cookbook authors, chefs, and just general food-people are asked! However, there is no one way to come up with a recipe. Sometimes it comes in an idea in the middle of the night, sometimes it's from inspiration at the farmers' market or grocery store, sometimes it's through intuition that certain ingredients would meld well together. A lot of times, though, it's through taking bits and pieces of different recipes for one thing, and perfecting the ingredients to your taste until you believed you've reached the "master" recipe. And for my Perfect Pumpkin Pie, that's exactly what I did!

Believe it or not, pumpkin is actually one of my favorite flavors–I love it in anything! Ravioli, gelato, gratins, créme brulee, pot de créme, and of course, PIE! Thus, creating the Perfect Pumpkin Pie was a task near and dear to my heart that I've been trying to accomplish for awhile. I've toyed with various recipes on and off, but this past week, I finally committed to an all out Pumpkin Pie Taste-Off. Because I'm in A.P. Statistics at school, my poll taking abilities are top notch. I had a panel of judges, handmade scores sheets, and even hired myself a sous-chef! Okay, the sous-chef was really my best friend, Marijke, and the panel of judges was her family, but still, it was pretty official.

I decided to use three recipes: that standard Libby's (Off the back of the can), The Silver Palate (My previous stand-by), and the recipe from the Chez Panisse Desserts Cookbook. I used the same store-bought crust for all three pies and informed the judges that they should judge ONLY on the filling, as the crust was a constant. The judges were not informed on what pie they were eating, only that there was A (Libby's), B (The Silver Palate), and C (Chez Panisse). After tasting a pie, they filled out the scorecard and repeated that 3 times. The four judging categories were: taste, appearance, texture, and aroma. Taste was the most important, and was scored on a scale from 1, being the lowest, to 10, being the highest. Appearance, texture, and aroma were scored on a scale from 1 to 5. After totaling A, B, and C's scores from the different judges, the results were announced and the pie I was going to make for Thanksgiving was to be decided.





Here are some of the comments:

A (Libby's): Bland and watery tasting. Completely missing the "spice" one expects from a pumpkin pie. Besides a nice color, it was basically inedible.

B (The Silver Palate): Nice appearance and the best seasoned of the three. Pumpkin flavor wasn't as intense as desired. Good pie.

C (Chez Panisse): Nice appearance with a great pumpkin flavor. Not as well-seasoned as B but still good flavored.



The results were surprising – B and C were a tie! Some judges preferred the spice of B to the pumpkin flavor of C and vice a versa. It was then I had an amazing thought! Take each of the elements I liked from B and C, along with some of my own additions and tweaking, and I would surely come up with the perfect pumpkin pie recipe! Brilliant! The recipe I created from the inspiration above, which I call The Perfect Pumpkin Pie (Because it is!), is below. Enjoy the perfect spice and pumpkin flavor of this amazing pie and, of course, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Stir together pumpkin puree and all spices until pumpkin has turned a darker shade. Whisk in eggs, egg yolk, and brandy into mixture. Beat in both sugars. Slowly add half & half and heavy whipping cream to pumpkin mixture and stir until incorporated and mixture looks uniform.
   
3. Pour pumpkin mixture into pie crust and bake at 350 for about 50 minutes or until a knife, put in halfway between the center and the edge of the pie, comes out clean. The filling will finish cooking after you take it out of the oven.
   
4. Let pie cool completely. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream and enjoy!