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Dessert

Pumpkin Pies

A pumpkin pie made with steamed pumpkin, butter, egg yolks, nutmeg, rose water, ginger, milk, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel the pumpkin and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Steam the pumpkin until soft, without water unless necessary.

  3. Mash the pumpkin while warm until smooth.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the butter, beaten egg yolks, nutmeg, rose water, ginger, and enough milk to achieve a medium thickness.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust made of puff pastry and bake.

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk and main flavour of the filling once cooked and mashed.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness and colour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the filling to a medium thickness.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Mashing the pumpkin until smooth. Any lumps or excess water left in the pumpkin will make the filling grainy or loose, so it must be well mashed and not watery before the eggs and milk go in.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, butter, egg, nutmeg, rose, 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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