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Dessert

Pumpkin Pies

A baked pie with a pumpkin filling made from steamed pumpkin, butter, egg yolks, nutmeg, rose water, ginger, and milk.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Steam the pumpkin until soft, adding water only if necessary.

  3. Mash the pumpkin until smooth while warm.

Make the filling and bake

  1. Stir in the butter, beaten egg yolks, nutmeg, rose water, and ginger.

  2. Add enough milk to achieve a medium thickness.

  3. Pour the mixture into a puff pastry-lined pie dish 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set during baking.
Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it body and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, softer texture and flavour.
Milk
Loosens the filling to a medium thickness and adds creaminess.

The step that matters

Mash the pumpkin until smooth while warm. Lumps or fibrous pieces stay in the custard and make the texture grainy. Warm pumpkin mashes more easily and blends more evenly with the other ingredients.

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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