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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie with a pumpkin filling, milk, cream, sugar, and spices, encased in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a deep pie tin with pastry made from flour, lard, salt, butter, and cold water.

Make and bake the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the pumpkin, milk, cream, beaten egg, salt, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger.

  2. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust.

  3. Bake for 45-50 minutes or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set when baked, giving the filling its firm, sliceable body.
Pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture and flavour base of the filling.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pastry crust that holds the filling.
Lard
Fat that shortens the pastry, producing a tender, flaky crust.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices in the filling.
Whole milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the custard-style filling set softly.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Underbaked filling stays runny, while overbaking can cause cracking and a rubbery texture as the egg proteins tighten too far.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, walnut, butter, milk, cream, egg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, walnut, butter, milk, cream, egg, sugar. 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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