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Dessert

Stewed Pumpkin or Sou Ash for Pies

A stewed pumpkin filling for pies made with pumpkin, milk, sugar, molasses, eggs, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Pumpkin or Sou Ash for Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut the pumpkin or squash in half and remove the seeds.

  2. Slice the pumpkin into thick pieces, pare the outside, and cut into small pieces.

  3. Place the pumpkin in a large pot with a little water and cook slowly until tender.

  4. Stir often until the moisture is dried out and the pumpkin looks dark and red.

  5. Let it cool, then strain through a colander.

Make the filling and bake

  1. For the pie, beat together the milk, boiled pumpkin, sugar, molasses, eggs (yolks and whites beaten separately), salt, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake.

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

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk and body of the filling once cooked down and strained.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure and a firm slice.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the filling set smoothly.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its body.
Molasses
Adds depth, colour and a deeper sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the pumpkin until the moisture is dried out. Excess water in the pumpkin thins the filling and can keep it from setting firmly, so the pumpkin must be cooked down until thick and dry before mixing.

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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