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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie flavored with orange, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs with 1 to 2 cups of sugar until well combined.

  2. Add 1 heaped tablespoon of flour and 1 even tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Flavor with orange extract or the juice and grated rind of 1 orange, then pour into a baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar and spread over the top of the pie.

  2. Place the pie in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown the meringue.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 custard and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Helps thicken the custard so it holds its body when sliced.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture, giving a smooth, stable filling.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard filling.
Egg white
Whipped into a meringue that sets and browns on top of the pie.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard on the boiling milk. Starch thickens only when heated enough, and the yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Pour gradually and keep stirring so the filling thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the orange

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

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

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