Name: Pumpkin Pie
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon nutmeg or ginger; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 cup boiled mashed pumpkin; 2 tablespoons molasses; 1 cup milk; ¼ cup sugar (omit if desired)

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
In a bowl, beat together the nutmeg or ginger, cinnamon, pumpkin, molasses, milk, and sugar.
Do not separate the egg; add it to the mixture.
Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake slowly without an upper crust.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Nutmeg + pumpkintop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,126 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the pumpkin

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Pumpkinthe original

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