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Dessert

Orange Pie

A pie made with oranges, raisins, sugar, flour, and crust, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the oranges into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the orange pieces in the pie crust and sweeten well with sugar.

  2. Add seeded raisins and sprinkle with flour.

  3. Cover with the upper crust.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Oranges
Provide the main fruit filling, adding juice and bright citrus flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the oranges and balances their natural tartness.
Flour
Sprinkled over the fruit to help thicken the juices as the pie bakes.
Seeded raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour over the fruit. Flour must be spread evenly over the juicy fruit so it can absorb liquid and thicken the filling. Unevenly distributed flour can leave pockets of raw starch or a runny, lumpy filling.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, flour. 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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