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Dessert

Pumpkin Pie

A custard pie made with pumpkin, milk, eggs, cream, sugar, and spices, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and cut the pumpkin into pieces.

  2. Cook the pumpkin slowly for 4–5 hours with just enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Mash the cooked pumpkin and strain it through a colander.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine 2 cups of strained pumpkin with 2 ½ cups of boiling milk, ½ teaspoon salt, ginger, cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into 1 cup of cream.

  3. Add 1 cup of sugar to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line pie plates with plain pastry and brush the crust with egg white.

  2. Crimp an ornamental border around the pie.

  3. Fill the crust with the pumpkin custard and bake in a moderate oven (350 °F / 175 °C) until firm and 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 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 custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and helps create a smooth, tender custard.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smoother, silkier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the spices.

The step that matters

Baking until firm and brown. Egg proteins set as the custard heats, so the pie must bake until the centre is firm. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can cause cracking or weeping.

Swap the mace

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

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

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