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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie made with flour, sugar, milk, orange extract, baked crust, topped with whipped egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve flour in ½ cup of sugar, then pour into 1 pint of boiling milk.

  2. Cook for about three minutes, then let cool and flavor with orange extract.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, then add ½ cup of sugar and flavor with orange extract.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pie and place in the oven to brown slightly.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 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. Milk + eggtop 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets smooth and creamy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the beaten egg whites hold their stiff foam.

The step that matters

Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pie. The meringue topping must be spread so it touches the crust edges and is baked briefly until lightly browned. Thin spots or overbaking can cause weeping or scorching.

Swap the orange

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

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

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