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Dessert

Orange Pie

A fruit pie with orange juice, zest, sugar, butter, corn starch, and egg yolks baked in a pie shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, butter, corn-starch, boiling water, egg yolks, orange juice, and grated rind until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie shell.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until set.

  2. Prepare a meringue with the egg whites and cover the pie.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven before serving.

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. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 filling and add richness and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Corn-starch
Thickens the liquid filling so it sets firm when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the orange.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and orange flavour to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg yolks and corn-starch unset, so the filling stays runny and will not slice cleanly. Overbaking can make the filling weep or toughen, so check for a firm centre.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, corn, egg. 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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