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Dessert

Baked Pumpkin or Squash for Pies

A baked pumpkin or squash filling for pies made with milk, sugar, molasses, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Pumpkin or Squash for Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut the pumpkin or squash into several pieces without peeling.

  2. Place the pieces on baking tins.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until soft.

  4. Remove from the oven.

  5. Scrape the pumpkin from the shell.

  6. Rub it through a colander until smooth.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, strained pumpkin, sugar, molasses, beaten egg yolks, salt, ginger, and cinnamon. Beat the mixture well.

  2. Pour it into a pie crust.

  3. Bake until set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling and help it set when baked.
Pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture and body of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the custard.
Molasses
Adds depth, dark color and a rich sweetness.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the filling heats, turning liquid into a soft custard. Underbaking leaves it runny; overbaking can make it cracked or grainy, so watch for a slight wobble in the center.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, molasses, egg, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, molasses, egg, ginger, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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