Name: Pumpkin Custard for Pies
Ingredients: 1 pint of milk; 1 cup of flour; ½ cup of sugar; 2 eggs; ½ teaspoon of mace or nutmeg; ½ teaspoon of cinnamon; 1 pint of cooked and strained pumpkin

Why it works: Cinnamon and pumpkin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,744 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pumpkin Custard for Pies

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Beat the flour, sugar, and eggs together using an egg beater.
Add the milk, vanilla, and stir until combined.
Place the pie crust in deep pie plates.
Pour the custard mixture into the crusts until they are half full.
Let the pies stand for 3 to 5 minutes, then fill them to the top.
Stir the custard before filling the pies.
For coconut pies, add coconut to the bottom of the crust before filling.
Place a small piece of butter on the coconut before adding the custard.

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.

Cinnamon + pumpkintop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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

Swap the mace

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits better
Macethe original

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