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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie made with orange flavoring, baked in a pie crust and topped with frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, sugar, milk, and flour (or cornstarch).

  2. Pour this mixture into the boiling milk while stirring continuously.

  3. Add orange flavoring to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust.

  2. Cover with frosting and brown slightly in the oven.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the custard so it holds its shape when sliced.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it holds its shape when sliced.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk while stirring continuously. Adding the egg and starch mixture slowly while stirring keeps the yolks from scrambling and lets the starch thicken the custard evenly into a smooth filling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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