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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie made with egg yolks, sugar, flour, corn starch, milk, and orange flavoring, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Orange Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with ½ cup of sugar until well combined.

  2. Add flour, corn starch, and salt dissolved in a little milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and cook for about 3 minutes.

  4. Flavor with orange extract.

  5. Pour into the baked pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Add the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and flavor with orange extract.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pie.

  4. Place in the oven to 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk 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 enrich it with richness and a smooth set.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the light topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue topping and helps the whites hold their foam.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard becomes firm enough to slice.
Corn starch
Adds extra thickening power so the custard sets smoothly when cooked.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard, which thickens as it cooks with the starches.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the boiling milk. Starch granules only thicken fully when heated in liquid, so the milk must be boiling and the mixture stirred in quickly to prevent lumps and ensure the custard thickens evenly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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