Thanksgiving taste testers ate lots of pie to see if ancient recipes hold up

For the sake of research.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
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Thanksgiving means one thing: pie. And lots of it.

The UC Berkeley Library scoured its collection of 900 cookbooks to find old recipes for Thanksgiving pies and then baked them and put them to the test.

The library went deep and found a recipe for "pompkin" pie from the 1796 cookbook, American Cookery -- the first known cookbook written by an American, according to the library.

Other recipes tested included a sweet potato pie from What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking from 1881 and quince pie from the 1940 book The Martha Washington Cook Book.

Reactions were mixed. When a pie is described as tasting like "a vegetable smoothie with pumpkin pie hints that's been baked," it may not be working. But it's Thanksgiving. So we'll give those 1796 bakers a pass.

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.


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