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Dessert

Squash Pie

A baked pie made with mashed squash, milk, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Squash Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the squash until tender.

  2. Mash the boiled squash.

  3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  4. Add the milk, sugar, and spices to the eggs.

  5. Mix all ingredients together.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Beat the strained mixture with an egg beater until perfectly smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour in a moderate oven (350°F or 175°C).

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Squash
Provides the main body and bulk of the filling, along with moisture and mild sweetness.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the custard-like filling its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, helping the filling become smooth and custard-like.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its tender texture.

The step that matters

Strain and beat until smooth. Straining removes fibres and lumps from the cooked squash, and beating evens out the mixture, so the baked filling sets with a silky texture instead of a grainy one.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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