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Dessert

Orange Pie

A fruit pie with orange juice, zest, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grate the rind of 1 orange and juice 2 large oranges.

  3. In a bowl, mix together the sugar and flour.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks, melted butter, and orange juice and rind to the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites to make meringue and spread it over the pie.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the egg whites in the meringue.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity in the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer texture and smooth mouthfeel in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets rather than running loose.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it weep or turn rubbery.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, orange, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits less well

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