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Orange Meringue Pie Filler

A sweet orange filling made with sugar, corn starch, eggs, and orange zest, used for meringue pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Meringue Pie Filler

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavorings

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the oranges and mix with the juice.

  2. Combine the oil of orange and alcohol.

Make the filling base

  1. In a kettle with a mechanical stirrer, mix sugar, corn starch, and carbonate soda.

  2. Add water and 100 pounds of glucose; bring to a boil with full steam.

  3. Once the starch sets, reduce steam and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Shut off steam and mix in beaten eggs.

  5. Add the remaining glucose.

  6. Pour onto a cooling table.

Flavor and package

  1. When it cools to about 110°F, add orange rind, juice, tartaric acid, oil, and alcohol.

  2. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Transfer to pails, covering the surface with parchment paper.

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling into a set, sliceable body as it gelatinises with heat.
Eggs
Add protein that helps enrich and firm the filling as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the cooked base.
Glucose
Adds sweetness and helps keep the filling smooth and resistant to crystallising.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances sweetness and brightens the orange flavour.
Oranges
Supply juice for acidity and rind for aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flavorings at 110°F. Adding the eggs and acid while the mixture is still very hot can curdle the eggs and break the starch structure. Letting it cool to about 110°F before adding the orange, tartaric acid, and alcohol protects the texture and keeps the volatile orange oil aroma from being lost to heat.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, 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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