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Dessert

Orange Pie

A fruit pie made with sliced oranges and apples, layered with white sugar and baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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. Peel and thinly slice the oranges, removing the seeds.

  2. Pare, core, and thinly slice the apples.

  3. Cover a pie plate with the pie crust.

Assemble

  1. Layer the sliced oranges in the pie plate, sprinkling white sugar over each layer.

  2. Alternate with layers of sliced apples, adding sugar to each layer until the pie plate is filled.

  3. Cover the pie with the remaining pastry.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift white sugar over the crust after baking.

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 + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 flavor and juice that moistens the filling as it cooks.
Apples
Add body and structure to the filling, holding shape as they soften in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice, helping form a syrup in the filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the fruit and forms the golden, crisp pastry that holds the filling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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