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Dessert

China Orange Pie

A pie with a thickened orange juice and sugar filling baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

China Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the oranges and remove the seeds, saving the juice.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold water.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the dissolved cornstarch with boiling water and add the sugar, orange juice, and beaten egg.

  4. Cook the mixture over medium heat until thickened.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Optionally, add strips of pie crust on top or a meringue, then 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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

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

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

Egg
Thickens the filling as it sets and adds richness to the custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the orange filling so it sets firmly when cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the orange juice.
Orange juice and pulp
Provides the main flavor and liquid that the starch and egg set into a filling.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thickened. Cornstarch must be heated to boiling to swell and thicken the filling. Undercooked starch stays thin and will not set properly, while the egg also needs heat to thicken without curdling.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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