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Dessert

Pumpkin Pies Without Eggs

A pumpkin pie made without eggs, using pumpkin, sugar, flour, milk, spices, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pies Without Eggs

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. Peel and cut the pumpkin into small pieces.

  2. Boil the pumpkin pieces until thoroughly cooked.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, prepared pumpkin, flour, and milk together. Add spice to taste.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the crust is golden and the filling is 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Pumpkin + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bulk, flavor and body of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it can set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the custard-like filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the pumpkin's earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Baking until the filling is set. Pumpkin custard continues to firm as it cools, and the starch from the flour and proteins from the milk set with heat. Pulling it too early leaves a loose, runny filling, while overbaking can cause cracking or a watery texture.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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