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Dessert

Squash Pie

A custard pie made from squash, milk, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Squash Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squash

  1. Stew the squash until soft and moist, then mash it finely.

  2. Mix 1 cup of milk with the squash and rub through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the yolks and sugar together, then stir them into the squash mixture.

  2. Add the whipped egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the remaining milk and fill pie pans lined with a stiff cream paste.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake until the batter is thick in the middle, then remove from pans and cool on plates.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Squash
Forms the body of the filling and gives moisture and sweet flavour.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whipped whites add lightness and help it set.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the custard-like filling set smoothly.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds flavour to the squash.

The step that matters

Bake until the batter is thick in the middle. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny centre while overbaking can make the filling weep or crack. The centre should look thick, not liquid.

“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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