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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with cooked pumpkin, eggs, sugar, butter, spices, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the pumpkin for 6 to 8 hours until soft.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cooked pumpkin with eggs, sugar, salt, pepper, butter, nutmeg, ginger, and sweet milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Let cool before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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 moisture and body.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pie its firm structure.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the custard texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the filling become smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs coagulate as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy. Cooling lets the custard finish setting firmly.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, butter, nutmeg, ginger, 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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