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Dessert

Orange Filling for Pie

A sweet orange filling for pie made with sugar, flour, egg yolks, orange juice and rind, lemon juice, butter, salt, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Filling for Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, egg yolks, salt, orange rind, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the mixture over ¾ cup of boiling water.

  3. Stir in a double boiler until thick.

Assemble

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and cover with meringue.

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. Lemon + buttertop 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 and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the filling by absorbing liquid as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp citrus juice.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavor and acidity in the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in a double boiler until thick. Egg yolks and starch thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle the yolks or leave the starch grainy. Gentle, steady heat and constant stirring give a smooth, thick custard.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, lemon, 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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