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Dessert

Squash Pie

A baked pie made with Hubbard squash, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 ↓

Squash Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the squash

  1. Bake the squash quarters until dry and thoroughly cooked.

  2. Scrape out the mealy part while warm and mix with flour, adding a little milk to moisten.

  3. Heat the squash mixture and add 3 pints of milk.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar, ginger, and cinnamon until well combined.

  2. Prepare a pie crust, incorporating baking powder into the flour.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold in the yolk mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into the pie shell and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Hubbard squash
Provides the main body and sweet, dense flavor of the filling once baked dry.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the squash and helps the filling hold its body when baked.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and sets with the eggs to form a custard.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set during baking to give it structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the crust and filling rise lightly.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the filling, and overmixing or deflating them makes the pie dense and less airy after baking.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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