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Dessert

Orange Pie

A pie filled with boiled orange halves, sugar, custard, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Cut the oranges in half and remove the seeds and cores.

  2. Soak the orange halves in 6 quarts of water for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the soaked oranges slowly for 3 hours.

  4. Add the sugar and boil until the mixture is clear.

  5. Pour the filling into a crock and let it set.

Bake and assemble

  1. Line pie plates with puff pastry, making a raised edge.

  2. Spread the orange filling in the lined pie plates and bake until done.

  3. Spread with orange-flavored custard and pipe a fancy meringue on top.

  4. Brown the meringue quickly and serve.

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

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and thickens it as the mixture boils down.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, raised crust that holds the filling.
Meringue
Adds a light, sweet topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue quickly. Meringue is mostly sugar and egg white, so it can weep or turn tough if overbaked. A quick browning keeps it light and glossy while the filling underneath stays intact.

“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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