Skip to main content
Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie made with pumpkin, eggs, milk, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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. Cook the small pumpkin until soft, then mash it.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the mashed pumpkin, eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. Mix well until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts and bake 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the main body and earthy flavor of the filling.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the filling its structure and firm texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the custard set smoothly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pie too late can leave it watery or cracked, while the filling continues to firm as it cools.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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

Eggless 15Filling 8 See all 403 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes