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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with cooked pumpkin, sugar, salt, ginger, milk, egg, and pastry, topped with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pumpkin and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,158 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut the pumpkin into rings, pare, and then cut into small pieces.

  2. Cook the pumpkin with a little water, stirring often, until all the water evaporates and the pumpkin is dry and rich brown.

  3. Pass the cooked pumpkin through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Mix in brown sugar, coarse sea salt, and ground ginger to taste.

  2. Add milk until the mixture reaches a rich cream consistency.

  3. Incorporate 1 egg for each pie.

Bake and serve

  1. Line deep pie tins with pastry, fill with the pumpkin mixture, and top with 1 or 2 spoonfuls of rich sweet cream.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°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. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 and body of the filling, with its flavor concentrated by cooking it dry.
Egg
Sets the filling into a sliceable custard as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the pumpkin into a smooth, rich consistency.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes that deepen the pumpkin flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the pumpkin dry. Stirring until all the water evaporates concentrates the pumpkin and prevents a watery filling that would fail to set properly when baked.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, sugar, milk, cream, egg. 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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