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Dessert

Squash Pie

A baked pie made with squash, sweet milk, spices, sugar, eggs, and a pie crust.

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 ↓

Squash 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 the squash

  1. Peel the squash and remove the seeds.

  2. Stew the squash until soft and dry.

  3. Pass the squash through a colander to make a pulp.

Make the filling

  1. Mix in enough sweet milk to achieve a batter-like consistency.

  2. Add ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar to taste.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving it body and a soft, creamy texture.
Eggs
Set as the pie bakes, holding the filling together when sliced.
Sweet milk
Loosens the squash pulp into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly as it bakes.
Ground ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Stew the squash until soft and dry. Excess water in the squash makes the filling loose and watery, so it may not set firmly when baked. Cooking off moisture first gives a thicker pulp that holds its shape.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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