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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with mashed pumpkin, eggs, spices, milk, and topped with whipped cream and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the pumpkin, egg yolks, cinnamon, cloves, sugar, and milk. Mix until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the pumpkin mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Once baked and cooled, top with whipped cream and sprinkle with walnut meats.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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, moisture and flavor of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the filling as it bakes, giving it a smooth, custard-like structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the filling and add airiness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its browning and flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the filling set into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stiff egg white foam traps air that gives lightness. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the filling turns dense rather than airy.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, clove, sugar, milk, cream, walnut. 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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