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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with pumpkin pulp, butter, flour, spices, sugar, milk, and eggs, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Pie crust for 2 pies

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. Wash the pumpkin, cut it in half, and remove the seeds.

  2. Invert each half in a roaster and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. Remove the pulp and run it through a colander or fruit press.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of pumpkin pulp with melted butter, flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, sugar, and milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then fold them into the mixture.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with crust and pour in the filling.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk of the filling and its moisture and body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the custard-like filling its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly as it bakes.
Whole milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the filling become smooth and custard-like.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the filling slightly and helps it hold its shape when cut.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten eggs. Beaten whites trap air and egg yolks thicken the filling; overmixing deflates the whites and can make the pie less smooth and set unevenly.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, sugar, 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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