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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie made with orange juice, grated rind, eggs, sugar, butter, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 large oranges.

  3. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  4. Add the beaten yolks of 3 eggs and 2 tablespoons of melted butter to the sugar mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until it resembles a finely baked custard.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add 2 tablespoons of sugar and spread over the pie.

  3. Return to the oven and brown slightly.

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. Flour + sugartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling into a custard as they set in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when whipped into the whites, stabilizes the topping.
Flour
Mixed with the sugar, it helps stabilize the filling so it sets smoothly.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the custard filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites under-beaten will not hold their shape, so the topping can weep or sink. Over-beating makes them dry and grainy, so they brown unevenly. Stiff, glossy peaks give a stable, evenly browned meringue topping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, orange, 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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