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Dessert

Orange Custard Pie

A custard pie made with orange rind, juice, eggs, sugar, milk, flour, and optional coconut or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Evora Bucknum Perkins · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Orange Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Use rind of 1 orange and juice of 2 oranges, 4 eggs, 4 tablespoons sugar, 1 pint rich milk.

  2. Leave out 2 egg whites for meringue.

  3. Mix flour, salt, and sugar; put into oiled saucepan; pour boiling milk over; stir until smooth; boil.

  4. Add yolks of eggs; just heat; add vanilla.

  5. Add coconut just before putting filling into crust, reserving enough to sprinkle the top of the meringue before baking.

Assemble and finish

  1. Turn into baked granella or pastry crust.

  2. Do not brown the meringue; just heat it until it puffs up and possibly tints the tips of the coconut.

  3. Use chopped hickory or other nuts in place of coconut in Cocoanut Cream Pie.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

644Calories
20 gProtein
7 gFat
123 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Pienot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Evora Bucknum Perkins. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 and enrich it, while whites form the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Milk (in the method)
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the starch and yolks set.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy and tender.
Desiccated cocoanut
Adds flavour and chewy texture to the filling and topping.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks. Yolks thicken the custard when gently heated; boiling after adding them can curdle or scramble them, so heat only until the filling thickens.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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