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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with cooked pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

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 a green pumpkin into pieces without peeling.

  2. Scrape off the inner shreds.

  3. Boil the pumpkin pieces with 1 pint of water in a thick porcelain-lined kettle for 5–6 hours until sweet and tender.

  4. Strain the cooked pumpkin through a purée sieve.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine 4 cups of strained pumpkin, 4 cups of milk, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 1 tablespoon of mace, 5 beaten eggs, and 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Grate ½ nutmeg into the mixture.

  3. Beat the custard well, tasting for sweetness.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into deep pie plates lined with pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes until solid in the center and golden-brown.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pumpkin + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the body of the filling and gives moisture and flavour.
Eggs
Set the custard so it turns solid in the center as it bakes.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the custard become smooth and creamy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Bake until solid in the center. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny center while overbaking can make the custard weep or crack. Look for a firm center and golden edges.

Swap the mace

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

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

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