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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin custard pie with a lard crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 filling

  1. Boil the pumpkin and strain it.

  2. In a bowl, combine the strained pumpkin, sugar, milk, egg yolks, and spices; beat thoroughly.

Make the crust

  1. For the pie crust, rub the lard into the flour with a little salt. Add enough cold water to make a stiff dough, roll it out thin, and line your pie pans.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add ½ cup sugar. Spread the meringue on top of the pie and bake until light brown.

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 + cinnamontop 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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard filling, and whites whipped into meringue give the topping its lift.
Pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture and flavour of the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the custard set when baked.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pie crust dough.
Lard
Shortens the flour, giving the crust a tender, flaky texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites under-whipped or deflated will not hold their volume, so the meringue turns out flat and weepy. Adding the sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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