Skip to main content
Dessert

Dkied Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with soaked dried pumpkin, sweet milk, egg, sugar, ginger, allspice, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dkied 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

  1. Soak the dried pumpkin in sweet milk for 2 hours.

  2. In a bowl, combine the soaked pumpkin, egg, sugar, ginger, and allspice.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pumpkin + allspicetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

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

Dried pumpkin
Provides the main pumpkin body and flavor of the filling.
Egg
Sets the filling as it bakes, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness to the filling, softening the dried pumpkin.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the custard heats, so the filling firms up. Removing it too early leaves a runny center, while overbaking can cause cracking and a rubbery texture.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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

More pumpkin pie recipes

You might also like