Skip to main content
Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A baked pie with a pumpkin custard filling flavored with spices, sugar, lemon, and liquor, set in thin pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Peel and boil the pumpkin with just enough water to prevent burning for about 30 minutes until tender; drain and mash through a colander or coarse sieve.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil; blend the flour with a little cold water and stir it into the boiling milk; stir and boil for about 3 minutes until thick.

  3. In a bowl, mix the thickened milk with the hot pumpkin. Add the spices, sugar, lemon peel, juice, liquor, and lastly the eggs mixed smooth with a little cold water.

Bake and finish

  1. Prepare your pie dishes lined with very thin pastry, adding 1 or 2 extra layers to the edges.

  2. Pour in the mixture, ensuring it is nearly 1 inch deep. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Draw the pie to the mouth of the oven, brush the edges with a little egg, and return to the oven until nicely browned.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 moisture to the custard.
Eggs
Set the filling into a firm custard as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the pumpkin.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the pumpkin and eggs set within.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs must be mixed smooth with cold water and added last to the warm mixture, so they blend evenly without scrambling. Their proteins then set the custard when baked.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, flour, butter, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, 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.

More pumpkin pie recipes

Eggless 15Filling 8 See all 403 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes