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Dessert

Pumpkin Pies

A custard pie made with stewed pumpkin, eggs, sweet milk, spices, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pumpkin Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel the pumpkin and cut it into 1-inch square pieces.

  2. Place the pumpkin in a pot with very little water over medium heat.

  3. Once it begins to soften, reduce the heat and stir frequently until all the water has evaporated.

  4. Rub the cooked pumpkin through a colander to prepare it for use.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the sweet milk, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, melted butter, and a little salt.

  2. Add sugar to taste and enough of the stewed pumpkin to achieve a custard-like consistency.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts and 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + pumpkintop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pie its structure and body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and softness.
Stewed pumpkin
Supplies the main flavor and thickens the custard with moisture and body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the pumpkin and spices.

The step that matters

Evaporating the pumpkin's water. Excess water left in the pumpkin dilutes the custard and can keep the pie from setting firmly, so the pumpkin should be cooked down until dry before mixing.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

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