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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie with orange zest and juice, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Grate the rind of 1 orange. Juice 2 oranges.

  3. In a bowl, mix together the sugar and flour. Add the egg yolks and melted butter to the sugar mixture.

  4. Stir in the orange juice and rind.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until it resembles a finely baked custard.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  5. Return to 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling into a custard, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the meringue, stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it sets as a custard rather than running.
Orange juice
Provides the main liquid and bright citrus acidity that flavors the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Underbaked filling stays runny because egg proteins have not yet coagulated, while overbaking makes the custard grainy and weeping. Bake only until it resembles a finely baked custard, then add the meringue.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, butter. 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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