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Dessert

Pumpkin Bread

A baked bread made from stewed pumpkin, sugar, salt, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Pumpkin Bread

Why it works: Pumpkin and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Pumpkin Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Stew the pumpkin until it's not quite dry.

  2. Stir in sugar, salt, and cornmeal until the mixture is stiff.

Prepare the pan

  1. Cut a paper to fit the bottom of the pan.

  2. Butter another paper for the sides.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

  2. When slightly brown, cover the bread.

  3. Keep it at the back of the oven until tea time.

  4. Serve hot with butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Pumpkin + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together286 recipes

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

  3. Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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 moisture that make up the body of the bread.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture into a stiff batter and gives the bread its grainy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cover the bread when slightly brown. Covering the loaf once the surface has browned stops the crust from darkening or drying further while the interior finishes cooking gently in the slow oven.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, bread. 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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