Skip to main content
Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie with stewed pumpkin, spices, sugar, egg, cream, and milk, optionally topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pumpkin and cinnamon 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix together the pumpkin, salt, mace, cinnamon, sugar, and beaten egg.

  3. Pour the hot cream and milk over the mixture and stir well.

  4. If the pumpkin is watery, add the flour.

Bake and serve

  1. If using puff pastry, lay it around the edge of the plate, at least 1 inch wide, and roll the edge thin.

  2. Fill the pie plate with the mixture and quickly place it in the oven.

  3. Bake until the pie rises well in the middle.

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

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

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk and main flavour of the filling.
Egg
Sets the custard as it bakes, giving the filling structure.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, silkier texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that helps the filling set into a soft custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.
Flour
Thickens the filling when the pumpkin releases extra water.

The step that matters

Adding the hot cream and milk. Pouring the hot liquid over the beaten egg mixture and stirring well helps the egg blend in evenly. Then the filling goes straight into the oven, so it bakes before the mixture separates or sits too long.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, cinnamon, sugar, egg, cream, milk, flour. 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.

More pumpkin pie recipes

Eggless 15Filling 8 See all 403 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes