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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, milk, sugar, spices, and corn starch or eggs, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Remove the seeds from the pumpkin and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Steam until tender, then remove the peel and mash finely.

  3. Alternatively, peel and boil in a small amount of water until well done and dry.

Make the filling

  1. Add the mashed pumpkin, ½ quart of milk, 2 cups of sugar, 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon and ginger, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 4 tablespoons of corn starch or 2 eggs.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake in a custard pan.

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 + gingertop 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 + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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

Pumpkin
Provides the main body and flavor of the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a smooth texture.
Corn starch or eggs
Thickens the filling so it sets rather than staying runny.

The step that matters

Cooking the pumpkin until dry. Pumpkin holding excess water will dilute the filling and can make the pie soggy or loose after baking. Cooking it until well done and dry concentrates its flavor and helps the custard set firmly.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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