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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with pumpkin, milk, sugar, eggs, spices, topped with honey and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Steam or stew the pumpkin until very dry.

  2. Rub the cooked pumpkin through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the pumpkin, scalded milk, salt, sugar, beaten eggs, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

  2. Pour the mixture into deep pie pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until set.

  2. Once cooled, add a layer of strained honey on top.

  3. Add a layer of whipped cream.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its body and flavor.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the custard-like filling its structure.
Scalded milk
Adds moisture and richness, producing a smoother, softer filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to browning at the edges.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it cracked and weepy. Pull it when the center barely jiggles.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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