Aunt Ruth's Sweet Potato Pie

This is the best sweet potato pie I have ever put in my mouth, in large part because of its unusual flavor.Traditionally, sweet potato pie is flavored with the same spices as its cousin, pumpkin pie—cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and allspice. The surprise in this version is that it eschews the heavy, heady flavor of the “fall spices” for a light, lemony taste that brings to mind warm spring or summer days.

Aunt Ruth was married to one of my grandfather’s brothers, and was one of the best cooks I ever knew. Since she wasn’t able to have children, I realized that this wonderful pie was in danger of passing into history; I got the recipe from her the year before she died.

Aunt Ruth was tickled to death when the newspaper in her small town ran this recipe with a column I wrote about pies; she would be amazed to know that since I put it on my Web site in 1999, the recipe has been downloaded morethan a quarter of a million times and has been made by people from Canada to Australia to the Sultinate of Bruni, making this pie literally world famous.
For a more traditional sweet potato pie, eliminate the lemon extract and add 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon each of ginger, allspice and nutmeg.