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Dessert

Plain Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with pumpkin, cornstarch, milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub the cornstarch smooth with a little milk.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the pumpkin, cornstarch mixture, milk, egg, and sweeteners and spices to taste.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately until the filling is set and the crust is golden.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk of the filling and its characteristic flavor and moisture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid filling so it sets firmly when baked.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the filling set into a smooth custard.
Egg
Adds structure, helping the filling set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the earthy flavor of the pumpkin.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Cornstarch thickens only once it heats, and the egg sets as the custard bakes. Letting the filling sit before it goes into the oven can thin it out and weaken the set, so the pie should go into the oven right after the filling is poured into the crust.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. 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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