Saint Martin Sweet Potato & Pumpkin Pudding

Saint Martin is an island in the eastern part of the Caribbean Sea. The island of Saint Martin, however, is home to two separate countries: "Sint Maarten," which is a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and it is located on the southern part of the island, and "Saint Martin," yes, the same name as the overall island, which is a part of France, and it is located on the northern part of the island. The entire island has a population of between 76,000 and 80,000, with the Dutch part having a slightly larger share of the population. The island was named for Saint Martin of Tours, who was bishop of Tours in Roman Gaul (later to become France) in the second half of the 300s. He was born in eastern Europe, in what would later become Hungary (the Magyars, essentially the people who became the Hungarians, were not even in Europe at the time of his birth). He died in Novemeber 397 and he was buried on November 11. People began honoring him on that day (November 12 in Eastern Orthodox) and many Christians saw him as a saint, although he was not officially declared a saint in the Roman Catholic faith until 1962 (Pope John XXIII). English is the common language of many of the residents of the entire island, although French is the official language of the French part and Dutch is official in the Dutch part.

  

Use "pumpkin puree," which is pure pumpkin, whereas pumpkin pie filling has ingredients added to the pumpkin. While you're going to add spices anyway, you may wonder why it matters, and perhaps it doesn't matter to you, but by using pure pumpkin, you can then control the ingredients going into your dish. If you use pumpkin pie filling, you won't need to add the spices, except where you have a preference for a particular spice. This is a slightly altered version of a recipe from a recipe as part of this link: http://www.stmartinisland.org/st-martin-restaurants/culinary-traditions-of-st-martin.html

Ingredients: 

1 sweet potato, cut into chunks (or grated if you're not using a food processor/blender)

2 cups pumpkin puree 

1 1/4 cup sugar

3 egg yolks, beaten

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup butter

1 can evaporated milk (12 ounce can, NOT sweetened condensed milk) 

1/4 cup flour

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon nutmeg or mace

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

3/4 cup raisins

2 tablespoons rum

3 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Heat the oven 350 F. Mix everything together, except the raisins and the egg whites. Once the basic mixture is well combined, stir in the raisins. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold in the egg whites. Bake in a well buttered baking dish for 90 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

I had the pudding with some vanilla ice cream ...

WORD HISTORY:  

Tin-The ultimate origin of "tin" is unknown, but it goes back to Old Germanic "tinan," which meant "tin," and there are no known relatives of the Germanic form in other language families, only forms borrowed from Germanic languages. The Germanic form gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tin," the form that has endured for so many centuries in English, right up to the present (this is also true in Low German, Frisian and Dutch, which is quite remarkable^). Relatives in the Germanic languages: German has "Zinn" (pronounced as if, "tsin," and once spelled with just one "n"), Low German Saxon has "Tinn," Dutch and West Frisian "tin," Danish "tin," Norwegian "tinn," Swedish "tenn," Icelandic "tin."  (NOTE: For a long time people thought tin was a lesser form of silver, because of the mixing in of other metals. This brought about the use of "tin" in disparaging expressions like "tin ear" ("person with little or no ability to understand musical subtleties;" broadened to also mean, "a person unable to discern public sentiment on an issue") and "tinhorn" ("a person less than satisfactory in performance of a job, even though they act competent").    

^ Low German and Dutch briefly had a secondary spelling of "ten," but "tin" remained during that time and persisted until all speakers of those languages again used just "tin."