Name: Pumpkin Pie Without Eggs
Ingredients: 1 small pumpkin; ¼ pound (1 stick) butter; 3 pints rich milk; Sugar to taste; 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon; 1 tablespoon ground ginger; 2 teaspoons salt

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pie Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Pare the pumpkin, remove the seeds, and steam until tender.
Mash the pumpkin until fine and strain through a colander.
Beat in the butter and enough milk to achieve the desired consistency.
Sweeten to taste, then add the cinnamon, ginger, and salt.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pumpkin + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,158 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the pumpkin

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.