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Puree of Pumpkin

A smooth pumpkin puree flavored with butter, flour, pepper, and sugar, served with fried bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Pumpkin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Cut the pumpkin into pieces.

  2. Boil the pumpkin pieces in salted water.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Pass the pumpkin through a colander.

Make the puree

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour without browning it.

  3. Add the pumpkin puree, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Boil for five minutes.

  5. Beat in the egg yolks and cream, if using.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish surrounded by fried bread crusts.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pumpkin + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the puree, giving body and a soft, smooth texture when strained.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the puree a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked into the butter, it thickens the puree so it holds its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the puree as they set gently with heat, adding richness and smoothness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning and earthy pumpkin flavour.

The step that matters

Add the flour without browning it. Flour cooked gently in butter thickens the puree smoothly; browning it gives a toasted, nutty flavour and colour that changes the dish and can leave lumps if it scorches.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, sugar, egg, cream, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, egg, cream, bread. 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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