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Dessert

Pie Plant

A pie made from pie plant, pumpkin, plums, eggs, sugar, ginger, milk, and water, canned and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and ginger work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 272 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pie Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Skin and cut the pie plant.

  2. Fill a glass can as full as possible with the cut pieces and cold water. Screw on the cover without cooking or heating.

Preserve the plums

  1. Wash plums and place them whole into a syrup made from 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar for every 2 pounds of fruit. Boil for 8 minutes, then can and seal immediately.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Wash pumpkin without peeling, cut into rings, then into small squares.

  2. Fill a kettle with the pumpkin and add a few spoonfuls of water. Cover and steam until tender.

  3. Remove the cover and cook until as dry as possible without burning, stirring often.

  4. Seal while hot in tin cans, keeping them dark.

Make and bake the pies

  1. When ready to make pies, remove the pumpkin from the can to a colander and sift thoroughly.

  2. Use 2 eggs for every 3 pies.

  3. Sweeten with good brown sugar, flavor with ginger, and thin with equal parts of milk and water or ⅔ water. Bake slowly in a good crust until solid like 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.

  1. Plum + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Plum + pumpkintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

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

  4. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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 gives body once cooked down and sifted.
Eggs
Set the filling into a solid, custard-like texture as it bakes.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, thinning the filling and softening its texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor to the filling.
Plums
Provide fruit flavor and sweetness, preserved whole in syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the pumpkin until as dry as possible. Excess moisture thins the filling and keeps it from setting firmly, so the pumpkin should be cooked down without burning before it is sealed and used.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits less well

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