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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie with a pumpkin filling made from pumpkin, flour, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and sweet milk, 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

Make the filling

  1. Combine pumpkin, flour, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, and sugar in a quart bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Fill the bowl with sweet milk.

Bake

  1. Line two pie plates with the crust.

  2. Pour the filling into the crusts.

  3. 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. 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Eggs
Set the custard so the filling firms up when baked.
Pumpkin
Provides the main body and pumpkin flavor of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling and helps give it a smoother texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid that loosens the filling and helps it bake smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-based custard runny, while overbaking can make it cracked and grainy. The filling is done when the edges are set and the center barely jiggles.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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