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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A pie with orange filling and a creamy topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated orange, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder until smooth.

Bake the pie

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.

Make the cream and serve

  1. For the cream, combine 2 cups of milk and 2 tablespoons of flour in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in 2 eggs and ⅔ cup of sugar, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Stir the mixture over medium heat until it thickens, then add the juice of the grated orange.

  4. Pour the cream over the baked pie and let it cool before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Set the batter and thicken the cream as they cook, giving structure to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the batter and the cream, giving the filling body as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, tender texture in the base.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the base rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the top of the bake.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness in both the base and the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream over medium heat. Flour thickens only when the starch in it heats enough to swell and set. Stirring keeps the mixture even and prevents lumps or scorching on the pan bottom, which would leave the cream grainy or uneven.

Swap the orange

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

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

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