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Dessert

Squash Pie

A baked pie made with cooked squash, milk, eggs, spices, and sugar in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Squash Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the squash

  1. Pare the squash and remove the seeds.

  2. Stew the squash in minimal water until soft.

  3. Squeeze the squash through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in enough sweet milk to make a thick batter.

  2. Add grated ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and sugar to taste.

  3. Whisk in 2 or 3 eggs for each quart of milk used.

Bake

  1. Line pie plates with crust and fill with the mixture.

  2. Bake for one hour in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Squash
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its body and flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the squash into a pourable batter.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.

The step that matters

Squeezing the cooked squash. Removing excess water from the stewed squash keeps the filling thick. Too much liquid can make the custard loose and slow to set in the oven.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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