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Dessert

Pumpkin Pir

A custard-like pumpkin pie made with pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, ginger, and salt, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pumpkin and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,158 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pir

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, combine strained pumpkin, rich milk, salt, and ginger. Cook until heated through.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the egg mixture to the pumpkin mixture, stirring continuously.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 filling into a custard as they cook, giving the pie its structure.
Strained pumpkin
Provides the main body, moisture and flavor of the filling.
Rich milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the custard stay smooth and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the spices and pumpkin.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot pumpkin. Stirring continuously while adding the eggs helps them blend evenly. If the eggs are added too quickly, they can scramble, leaving lumps in the custard.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, milk, egg, 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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