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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with mashed pumpkin, molasses, sugar, spices, milk, lemon extract, and a flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cook the pumpkin until soft.

  2. Press the cooked pumpkin through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Mix 1 cup of the mashed pumpkin with molasses, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and enough milk to thin, then add lemon extract.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust made from flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture and body of the filling.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep colour and a rich, caramel-like flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spice and pumpkin flavour.
Flour
Gives the pie crust structure so it holds the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the crust, helping it rise and stay light.
Milk
Thins the filling to a smooth, pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The filling firms as it heats and then cools. Underbaking leaves it runny and soft, while overbaking can dry it out and cause cracks.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, flour, ginger, 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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