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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with cooked pumpkin, sugar, egg, milk, optional cream, spices, and baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the pumpkin and cook it in a small amount of water until tender and dry.

  2. Sift the cooked pumpkin and mix in sugar to taste.

  3. Add 1 egg for each pie and enough milk to achieve the desired consistency.

  4. Stir in 1-2 tablespoons of cream for added richness, if desired.

  5. Season with nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger to taste.

Bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust, incorporating a little baking powder for lightness.

  2. Pour the filling into the crust and bake in deep perforated tin plates.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the body and flavour base.
Egg
Sets the filling as it bakes, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, adjusting the filling to the desired consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the earthy flavour of the pumpkin.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the crust, making it lighter and more tender.

The step that matters

Cooking the pumpkin until dry. Pumpkin holds a lot of water. If it stays wet, the filling bakes loose and watery, so it should be cooked until tender and dry before the other ingredients are added.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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