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Dessert

Orange Pie, No. 2

A custard pie made with oranges, milk, corn starch, and egg yolks, topped with a frosted egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Orange Pie, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel, seed, and cut the oranges into very small pieces.

  2. Mix the oranges with 1 cup of sugar and let them stand.

  3. In nearly boiling milk, stir 2 tablespoons of corn-starch mixed with a little water and the yolks of 3 eggs.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Combine the cooled mixture with the oranges.

  6. Pour the mixture into a lower pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites with ½ cup sugar to make frosting.

  3. Spread the frosting over the pie.

  4. Briefly place the pie in the oven to brown.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 milk and egg yolk mixture so the filling sets.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and body to the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a frosting that gives a light, soft topping.
Oranges
Provide the main citrus flavor and acidity of the filling.
Milk
Forms the custard base that the starch and yolks thicken.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. The custard must cool before it is combined with the oranges and poured into the crust; adding it warm can thin the filling and curdle the egg yolks, so it will not set properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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