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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with pumpkin pulp, milk, egg, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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. Cut the pumpkin into small pieces and cover with water and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil slowly until the pulp is dry, then rub through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of the pumpkin pulp, 1 cup of milk, 1 egg, ½ cup of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of ground ginger.

  2. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

  3. Sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a little sugar, then sift on ¼ cup of flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 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 pulp
Provides the main pumpkin flavor and body for the filling.
Egg
Sets the filling into a firm custard as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that becomes the creamy custard base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the pumpkin's earthy flavor.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Boil the pumpkin until dry. Excess water in the pulp dilutes the custard, so it may not set firmly or may turn watery. Cooking until the pulp is dry concentrates its flavor and keeps the filling thick enough to hold its shape.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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

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