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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, cream, eggs, sugar, molasses, spices, and butter, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

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.

Prepare

  1. Boil the prepared pumpkin with 1 teaspoon of salt until tender.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the boiled pumpkin, cream, beaten eggs, sugar, molasses, ginger, cloves, melted butter, salt, and cinnamon. Mix until well combined.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk and body of the filling.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly while baking.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness and a darker color to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken the filling as they heat. Underbaking leaves it loose and runny, while overbaking can cause cracking and a grainy texture as the egg proteins tighten too far.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, sugar, molasses, ginger, clove, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, sugar, molasses, ginger, clove, butter. 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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