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Dessert

Orange Pie

A baked orange custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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.

Make the filling

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

  2. Combine the juice and rind of the orange, sugar, egg yolks, corn-starch mixed with milk, butter, and milk in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  4. Bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pie.

  3. Return to the oven until browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  5. Orange + chestnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 structure as they set.
Corn-starch
Thickens the filling so it holds a sliceable set when cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a foam that gives the meringue its volume and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Orange juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form. Whites must be fully whipped into a stable foam to hold their shape. Under-whipped meringue can weep or slump, and any fat or yolk left in the bowl stops the whites from foaming properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, corn, milk, butter, chestnut. 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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