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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, milk, eggs, ginger, cinnamon, molasses, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 filling

  1. Bake a small pumpkin until soft, then scoop out the pulp.

  2. In a bowl, combine the pumpkin pulp with milk, eggs, ginger, cinnamon, salt, and molasses, then add sugar to taste and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cinnamon + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate when heated, giving the filling its set structure and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, supplying moisture and a creamy texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth, and a darker color to the filling.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and spice flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. The eggs in the custard coagulate as they heat. Overbaking makes the filling dry, grainy, and prone to cracking, while underbaking leaves it runny.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cinnamon, sugar, molasses. 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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