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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie with pumpkin, sugar, sweet cream, eggs, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cook the pumpkin until soft.

  2. Pass the cooked pumpkin through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg whites separately from the yolks.

  2. Add the yolks, one egg white, sugar, and cinnamon to the pumpkin.

  3. Stir in the cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Ice the pie with the remaining egg white.

  3. Brown slightly in the oven.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pumpkin + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Pumpkin
Provides the main body, moisture and bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Their proteins set as the filling bakes, giving the pie its firm structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the pumpkin and spice.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smoother, softer texture.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spiced flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C). The egg proteins set as the filling heats. Too much heat or too long in the oven can make the custard curdle, crack or weep liquid, so watch for a set center rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, 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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