Pumpkin Pie Spice Substitutes: Homemade Blends, Apple Pie Spice and Single Spices

Pumpkin pie spice is a blend, and cinnamon leads it. McCormick’s label lists cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice, in that order;¹ US rules require ingredients to be listed in descending order of weight,² so cinnamon is the largest part. Oregon State University Extension’s Food Hero recipe uses cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, with twice as much cinnamon as ginger.³ So any substitute should be mostly cinnamon, with something sharper and something clove-like behind it.

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship, with the source named.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. We show each one and do not average them.
• Method: we found no published ratio. We give a direction and a cautious starting point, and say so.

Most of the ratios here come from The Spice House, a spice merchant writing about its own blend category, and from King Arthur Baking’s guidance for its own blend. They are rules of thumb, not measurements of flavor strength.

Why the swaps work

Each spice in the blend has its own chemistry, and the substitutes work when they keep the same balance.

• Cinnamon. Cassia bark oil is 70 to 95 percent cinnamaldehyde, with only traces of eugenol.⁴ That is the sweet, warm backbone.
• Cloves and allspice. Clove bud oil is mainly eugenol, at 70 to 90 percent,⁵ and allspice oil carries eugenol at 50 to 80 percent.⁶ The shared compound is why recipes use one or the other: McCormick’s blend has allspice and no cloves,¹ while Oregon State’s has cloves and no allspice.³ Britannica says allspice is so named because its flavor resembles a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.⁷
• Ginger. Its pungency comes from gingerols, which PROSEA describes as non-volatile phenols.⁸ It adds bite rather than aroma.
• Nutmeg. Its oil is led by alpha- and beta-pinene and sabinene,⁹ a different chemistry from cinnamon’s, which is why it rounds the blend out rather than doubling the cinnamon.

If it is spicing a pumpkin pie or custard

1. Make your own

Two published recipes, quoted as their authors’:

The two differ in style: Oregon State’s is gingerier and uses cloves alone for the clove note, while The Spice House uses both allspice and cloves. Either is a reasonable copy of a store-bought blend, since no brand publishes its proportions.

How much to use (Attributed): King Arthur’s guidance for its own blend is to substitute an equal amount of blend for the total amount of spice in a pumpkin pie recipe.¹¹ Read the other way, use the same total amount of your homemade mix as the recipe asks for pumpkin pie spice.

2. Skip the blend and use the spices directly

Many pumpkin pie recipes list the spices one by one. Libby’s Famous Pumpkin Pie, for one, uses 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves for one deep-dish pie,¹² which is 1 3/4 teaspoons of spice in total, in the same 4 : 2 : 1 cinnamon-ginger-clove ratio as the Oregon State recipe.³ If your recipe calls for pumpkin pie spice, you can measure out its amount in those proportions.

Ratio (Attributed): Libby’s amounts for its own pie, combined with King Arthur’s equal-amount rule.¹²¹¹

If you have whole spices, McCormick’s grinding conversions apply: a 1 1/2-inch cinnamon stick gives about 1 teaspoon ground, half a nutmeg about 1 teaspoon, and 5 allspice berries about 1 teaspoon (Computed, volume only).¹³ These say nothing about how strong the freshly ground spice will taste.

If it is warmth in muffins, quick breads, oatmeal or lattes

Apple pie spice

The Spice House says the two blends can be used interchangeably.¹⁰ They are close relatives, but not identical:

So McCormick’s apple pie spice lacks the ginger, and The Spice House’s adds star anise. The Spice House’s substitution article also says its apple pie spice contains cardamom;¹⁰ its product page, as we read it, does not list cardamom.¹⁵ Check your jar.

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice House: interchangeable, so 1:1.¹⁰ If your apple pie spice has no ginger, a small pinch of ground ginger brings it closer.

If you only have one or two of the spices

Cinnamon plus one other

Ratio (Attributed): For 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice, The Spice House says to use 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of ginger, allspice, cloves or nutmeg. With two of those, use 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of each.¹⁰

Of the four, allspice comes closest on its own, for the reason Britannica gives above.⁷ In our judgment cloves are the most assertive of the four, so if they are your second spice, treat the 1/4 teaspoon as a ceiling rather than a target.

Cinnamon alone

The Spice House says that since the blend is mostly cinnamon, plain cinnamon will do, with some loss of complexity.¹⁰

Ratio (Method): The Spice House gives no amount. Start with the same amount as the pumpkin pie spice.

No cinnamon: ginger or allspice

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice House says ginger or allspice can stand in, at half the amount called for, because both are stronger than cinnamon.¹⁰

What isn’t known

• No brand publishes the proportions of its pumpkin pie spice, so no homemade recipe can be shown to match a particular jar.
• None of the ratios on this page comes from a side-by-side tasting test. They are a merchant’s and a baking company’s rules of thumb.
• No regulator or standards body gives a shelf life for homemade spice blends; claims that a homemade mix keeps “up to a year” could not be traced.
• A common claim says cloves are the dominant spice in most pumpkin pie spice blends. McCormick’s blend contains no cloves,¹ and in Oregon State’s recipe cloves are the smallest share.³

Related

• Pumpkin pie spice, apple pie spice, apple pie spice substitutes
• Cinnamon, cassia cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, mace
• Cinnamon substitutes, ginger substitutes, nutmeg substitutes, allspice substitutes, substitutes for cloves
• Allspice vs. cloves, cinnamon vs. nutmeg, mace vs. nutmeg
• Pumpkin soup spices, pancake spices
• Too much cinnamon, too much clove, too much ginger