Name: Pumpkin Pie
Ingredients: 1 pint pumpkin (Hubbard); 1 pint milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 pint heavy cream; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon ginger; sugar to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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

Cook the pumpkin until soft, then drain and mash it.
Cook the mashed pumpkin for a long time, stirring occasionally.
Add milk, cream, salt, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, and sugar to the pumpkin.
Strain the mixture and pour it into a pie crust.
Fill the crust with the pumpkin custard to about 1 inch thick.

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.

Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,158 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Swap the ginger

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Gingerthe original
Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, milk, cream, egg, cinnamon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.