I am no stranger to Pumpkin Bread. It’s something I make every year before the leaves have even started to change or there’s a chill in the air because I look forward to it so much. So when I found an old recipe card for Pumpkin Bread, making it was a no-brainer. With these old recipe cards, you never quite know what you’re going to get — some recipes are a little too “retro,” some just plain don’t turn out, some are kind of meh… but this one turned out a delightful and dependable Pumpkin Bread that you can make again and again.

This card came to me through the Recipe Tin Project, which is a project where I cook my way through an old recipe tin full of vintage recipes. But you might have already guessed that. It’s chock full of old recipe cards, most of which seem to be from the ’60s and ’70s, though some are older. I love food history, and the idea is to breathe new life into these recipes from the past and maybe learn a technique or two from them along the way. The recipes come from different people with different handwriting; some have sweet illustrations while others are on plain (often smudged and stained) index cards.

This one is one of the latter — a stained and smudged lined index card — and it came with something we don’t often get — a name! Anita S. is written in the top right corner in blue ink. There aren’t a lot of instructions, but the ingredient list is pretty complete and easy to understand, so I felt confident heading into making this one.

The instructions are somewhat mixed in with the ingredients and the first step is to beat four eggs with “salad oil,” a cup of pumpkin, and a cup of water. As usual, you want to make sure to use pumpkin puree and not pumpkin pie filling, which is already sweetened and flavored for you. I took salad oil to mean a neutral oil and used canola; vegetable would work fine too.

The only other instructions is to add the remaining ingredients and mix, so that’s just what I did.

The card says this makes two loaves but doesn’t specify what size; I used 8×4-inch loaf pans.

Mine took a little over an hour in the oven — but all ovens differ — and turned out two beautiful moist loaves of pumpkin bread. It’s a basic bread, subtle in flavor without any bells and whistles but with a lovely moist crumb. It feels like more of a simple breakfast bread to me and would be delicious with a special cinnamon butter!