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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pie made with sliced pumpkin, allspice, sugar, water, and pastry, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pumpkin and allspice work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel the pumpkin and remove the seeds and fluffy part.

  2. Cut the pumpkin into small, thin slices.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a pie dish with the pumpkin slices.

  2. Add allspice, sugar, and a small amount of water.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes or more, depending on the pie size.

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. Pumpkin + allspicetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pumpkin + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Allspice + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 sets into a soft, tender body when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the earthy flavour of the pumpkin.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and provides a crisp, browned crust during baking.

The step that matters

Cover with pastry and bake. The pumpkin must cook through while the pastry browns. Baking time depends on pie size, so check that the filling is tender before removing the pie from the oven.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pumpkin, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, 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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