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Dessert

Orange Pie

A fruit pie with orange zest, juice, sugar, eggs, flour or cornstarch, butter, water, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the rind and juice the oranges.

  2. In a bowl, mix the orange juice and zest with sugar, egg yolks, flour or cornstarch, melted butter, and water until well combined.

  3. Line a pie pan with pie crust and pour the filling in.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the filling thickens.

Add the meringue and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually mix in 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pie, sprinkle with sugar, and return to 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. 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. Egg + flourtop 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 as they set during baking, giving it a custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the orange filling so it sets rather than staying runny.
Orange
Supplies juice for acidity and zest for aroma and bright flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to a firm foam before sugar is added; under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold their peaks and the meringue will weep or slump. Any fat or yolk left in the bowl prevents full whipping.

Swap the orange

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

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

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