Skip to main content
Dessert

Pieplant Pie

A pie made with pieplant, sugar, egg, flour, optional orange peel, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Pieplant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped pieplant, sugar, egg, and flour; stir well.

  3. Add a little grated orange peel for extra flavor, if desired.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg white until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling.

  3. Bake until the meringue is golden 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Pieplant
Provides the tart flavor and the bulk of the pie filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the pieplant.
Egg
Helps bind the filling and gives it a set structure as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the juices from the pieplant so the filling holds together.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam to form the meringue topping, which gives structure and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Egg white foam needs to be whipped until firm peaks form, because the air it holds gives the meringue its volume and structure. Adding the sugar gradually helps it stay stable and glossy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes