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Dessert

Grape Fruit Pie

A fruit pie with grapefruit and orange filling thickened with cornstarch and eggs, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Grape Fruit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Bake a pie shell as for lemon pie.

  2. Mix cornstarch in a little cold water, then pour in boiling water.

  3. Add grapefruit juice, orange rind and juice, egg yolks, egg white, and butter.

  4. Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring constantly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour filling into the baked shell.

  2. Beat the egg white with sugar until thick, then spread over the pie.

  3. Bake in the oven until lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Grapefruit + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the juice mixture into a sliceable filling as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, adding richness and a smooth set.
Grapefruit juice
Provides the main tart citrus flavour and liquid for the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and balances the tart citrus.
Egg white
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling in a double boiler. Stirring constantly while the filling cooks keeps the egg yolks from scrambling and lets the cornstarch thicken evenly. Overheating can curdle the eggs or leave the filling lumpy.

Swap the grapefruit

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapefruitthe original

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