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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie made with orange rind, juice, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grate the rind of one orange and juice two oranges.

  3. In a bowl, stir together one cup sugar and two tablespoons flour.

  4. Add the beaten yolks of three eggs and two tablespoons melted butter to the sugar mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie pan lined with pie paste.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until it resembles a finely baked custard.

  2. In another bowl, beat the three egg whites until stiff, then add two tablespoons sugar and mix well.

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites evenly over the baked pie.

  4. Return the pie to the oven and brown the top slightly.

  5. If desired, add the juice of one-half lemon for extra flavor.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard filling, while whites whipped into a meringue set into a light topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, dissolved into the whipped whites, stabilises the meringue topping.
Flour
Helps thicken the orange filling so it sets into a custard rather than running.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and liquid that the filling is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the custard filling.

The step that matters

Baking the custard filling. Egg yolks and flour must set gently without overbaking; too much heat makes the custard curdle, weep or turn grainy. Bake only until the filling resembles a fine custard, since it will continue to set as it cools.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, flour, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits less well

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