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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, milk, sugar, spices, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

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. Remove the seeds from the pumpkin and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Steam the pumpkin until tender, then remove the peel and mash it finely.

  3. Alternatively, peel and boil the pumpkin in a small amount of water until well done and dry.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed pumpkin with milk, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and corn starch (or eggs).

  2. Mix well and pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 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 + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its body and flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the filling set into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and pumpkin flavor.
Corn starch or eggs
Thickens the filling so it sets firmly when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking until the filling is just set lets the starch or egg proteins firm up into a sliceable custard. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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