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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard-like pie made with orange juice, peel, pulp, and butter, sweetened with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Orange Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Soak orange juice and grated peel together for 30 minutes, then squeeze through a muslin bag.

Make the filling

  1. Stir the cornstarch into the boiling water.

  2. Cream the butter and powdered sugar, then pour the hot cornstarch mixture over them.

  3. Cool the mixture, then add the orange pulp and beaten egg.

  4. Remove the inner rind and seeds from the half orange, chop finely, and add to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in pie shells until set.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the filling.
Egg
Sets during baking to give the filling its structure.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a starch paste that gives the filling body.
Orange
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity from juice, peel and pulp.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the egg. Adding beaten egg to a very hot starch mixture can scramble it. Cooling first lets the egg blend smoothly, so it sets evenly into a silky filling when baked.

Swap the orange

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

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

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