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Dessert

Orange Pie

A pie made with grated orange, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, and sweet milk, topped with a frothy sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the orange and mix it with sugar, butter, egg yolks, and flour, then beat thoroughly.

  2. Add the milk.

  3. Pour into a pie crust.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, then add sugar to sweeten.

Bake and finish

  1. Spread the frosting on top of the baked pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven until the frosting is light brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites whip into a light, stiff frosting.
Orange
Supplies the main flavour and aroma, along with a bright acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and the frosting, and helps the frosting brown.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Returning the pie to the oven. The frosting is mostly whipped egg white and sugar, which can darken quickly. Watch it closely so it turns light brown and does not scorch, since the sugar caramelises fast at high heat.

Swap the orange

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

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

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