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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie made with stewed pumpkin, sweet milk, eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 pan with crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine stewed pumpkin and sweet milk.

  2. Add beaten eggs, sugar, butter, grated nutmeg, and salt if desired.

  3. Pour the mixture into the crust and fill it full.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until set, about 45-50 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pumpkin + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the filling firms up when baked.
Stewed pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture and flavour of the filling.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and richness that help form a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and softens its flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat; underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it cracked and grainy. Check that the centre barely wobbles before removing it from the oven.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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