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Dessert

Squash Pie

A baked pie made with boiled squash, egg, sugar, flour, spices, and optional sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Squash Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the squash until well done and sift through a colander.

  2. In a bowl, combine the squash with the egg, sugar, flour, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice.

  3. Add enough milk to achieve the right consistency for baking.

  4. If desired, mix in a few spoonfuls of sweet cream.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake 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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Squash
Forms the body of the filling and gives the pie its moisture and flavor.
Egg
Sets the filling as it bakes, giving it structure and a custard-like firmness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly at the edges.
Flour
Thickens the filling and helps it hold together when sliced.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the filling heats, so the pie must be baked until the centre no longer wobbles. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, nutmeg, allspice, milk, cream. 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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