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Dessert

A Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with cooked pumpkin, sweet milk, spices, eggs, sugar, cream, and a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut the pumpkin into long strips, remove seeds and pulp, and pare the strips.

  2. Place the pumpkin in a thick saucepan with 2 inches of boiling water and cover the saucepan.

  3. Simmer for 6 hours until soft.

  4. Mash the cooked pumpkin and strain the mash through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the strained pumpkin, sweet milk, salt, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs with sugar and mix the beaten eggs into the pumpkin mixture.

  3. Add the cream and taste to adjust sweetness.

Bake the pie

  1. Line pie plates with crust and brush the crust with egg white.

  2. Fill the crust with the pumpkin mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the center is solid.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the main body and flavor of the filling once cooked and strained.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling its firm, sliceable structure.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the filling bake smooth.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its browning during baking.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the filling silkier and richer in texture.

The step that matters

Bake until the center is solid. Egg proteins set as the filling heats, so underbaking leaves a runny center while overbaking can cause cracking and weeping. Checking that the center is just set matters most.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, milk, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, sugar. 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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