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Dessert

For Three Pies

A pumpkin custard pie made with pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and butter, baked in pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Braun, Emil · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,324 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

For Three Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut up and boil half a small pumpkin until soft. Strain off the water well and press the dry meat through a colander.

Make the custard

  1. Beat six eggs with six ounces of powdered sugar, one-half teaspoonful salt, one tablespoonful ginger, and one-half nutmeg.

  2. Add the pumpkin, one quart of milk, and one tablespoonful of melted butter.

  3. Strain the mixture again through a colander.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill deep pie dishes lined with plain pie paste.

  2. Bake like custard pie for twenty to thirty minutes.

  3. If the bottom is not quite baked, set the pie on top of a hot stove for a few seconds to finish the bottom. The same rule applies to custard pies.

By Braun, Emil. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard, giving it structure as they cook.
Pumpkin (in the method)
Provides the body and flavour of the filling.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, forming the custard base.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Baking the bottom crust. Custard needs enough heat to set fully; an underbaked bottom can stay soft or wet. Finishing the bottom briefly on a hot surface helps it set without overbaking the custard.

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  3. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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