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Dessert

Orange Cream Pie

A custard pie made with orange zest, juice, lemon, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, corn starch, and baked with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Cream 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. Grate the yellow part of the orange and squeeze the juice into a bowl, along with the lemon juice.

  2. In another bowl, pour 1 cup of boiling water over the grated orange and lemon, and let it stand.

  3. In a double boiler, combine the milk and 1 cup of boiling water.

  4. Beat the 4 egg yolks and 1 egg white with the butter, sugar, and corn starch.

  5. Add the orange and lemon juice, grated rind, and a pinch of salt to the egg mixture.

  6. Pour this mixture into the boiling milk and water, stirring constantly until well cooked.

Assemble and bake

  1. Bake a pie shell, then pour in the orange cream mixture.

  2. Whip the remaining egg whites until stiff, then fold in a little orange flavor and powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pie and brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard, while whipped whites form the light topping that browns.
Corn starch
Starch thickens the orange cream as it cooks, giving it a smooth, sliceable set.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the filling.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks with the starch to form a creamy custard.
Orange
Supplies the main flavor, aroma and acidity, with rind adding fragrant oils.

The step that matters

Stirring the filling while it cooks. Starch granules can clump and scorch on the hot bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, and the custard only thickens fully once it is properly cooked through.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, butter, corn, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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