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Dessert

Orange Pie

A fruit pie with orange and lemon flavors topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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.

Make the filling

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the egg yolks, orange juice, orange rind, lemon juice, and lemon rind; mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust without a top crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and return to the oven for a few minutes to 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 as they set, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, smoother texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the citrus flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites need to be beaten to firm peaks before sugar is added gradually; under-whipped whites will not hold the meringue and may weep or collapse when browned.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, lemon, nutmeg. 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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