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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie flavored with orange, topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix sugar, flour, and corn starch in a bowl.

  2. Add a little milk and egg yolks, beat until smooth.

  3. Stir in boiling milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Flavor the mixture with orange.

Top and brown

  1. Make a meringue from egg whites and spread on top of the pie.

  2. Brown the meringue 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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps keep the custard smooth and tender.
Flour
Thickens the custard together with the corn starch for a sliceable texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the filling its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens when cooked.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help thicken it as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whip into a meringue that sets and browns on top of the pie.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Starch granules swell and thicken the milk only when the mixture reaches a full boil. Undercooked custard stays thin and runny, while overcooking can cause the egg yolks to curdle or the starch to break down.

Swap the orange

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

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

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