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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, brown sugar, molasses, milk, butter, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix ginger and cinnamon with a little of the pumpkin until smooth.

  2. Add the boiling milk to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the pumpkin.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Beat the eggs until light and stir them in, but do not boil.

  6. Pour the mixture into a pie crust while hot.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 filling and gives body and flavor.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure and firmness.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, forming the liquid base of the custard.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Dark molasses
Adds rich color, moisture and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs without boiling. Egg proteins set as they heat, so if the mixture boils after the eggs go in, the custard can curdle and turn grainy instead of smooth and sliceable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pumpkin, sugar, molasses, milk, butter, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, sugar, molasses, milk, butter, ginger, cinnamon. 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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