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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie made with orange juice, rind, and eggs, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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

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

Make the filling

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Mix in the sugar, orange juice, grated orange rind, and salt.

  3. Add the cream or milk and mix well.

  4. If using milk, add a small piece of butter.

  5. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake until set.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and give it a rich, custard-like body as they set.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they lighten the filling and add airy structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the orange juice.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity, and liquid for the filling.
Cream or milk
Adds liquid and fat, making the filling smoother and more tender when baked.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives lightness; stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, while gentle folding keeps the filling airy and prevents a dense, flat result.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, butter, 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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