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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A pumpkin pie made with pumpkin, eggs, spices, sugar, milk, baked in a crust.

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 ↓

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Select a deep yellow pumpkin and peel it.

  2. Cook the pumpkin slowly until soft and all water has evaporated.

  3. Mash the pumpkin and simmer until it becomes brown and waxy.

  4. Pass the pumpkin through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. In a large bowl, combine the pumpkin with the eggs, mace, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt, brown sugar, and milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 300°F (150°C) until golden brown.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 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. Ginger + nutmegtop 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 the pie its body and flavour.
Eggs
Set the filling into a firm custard as they cook, giving structure.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth, and helps the custard brown.
Whole milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the custard into a smooth set.

The step that matters

Cook the pumpkin until all water has evaporated. Excess water dilutes the custard and keeps it from setting firmly, leaving a soggy or runny pie. Simmering concentrates the pumpkin's flavour and gives a thicker filling.

Swap the mace

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

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

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