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Dessert

Orange Pie

A pie made with sour orange juice, grated orange rind, corn starch, water, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve corn starch in water.

  2. Stir into boiling water and cook until clear, stirring to prevent lumps.

  3. Add sour orange juice, grated rind, and sugar to taste.

  4. When cool, stir in beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a pie crust and bake.

  2. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff, then spread over the pie.

  3. Lightly brown in the oven.

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. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the orange juice mixture into a smooth, sliceable filling as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff, airy meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sour orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the cornstarch mixture until clear. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it is heated enough to swell and gelatinize. Stirring constantly while it cooks prevents lumps from forming, and the mixture should look clear before cooling.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, 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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