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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie made with eggs, orange juice and rind, sugar, milk, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour, milk, and the grated rind and juice of the orange, then mix well.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler and stir until slightly thickened.

Fill and bake

  1. Pour the thickened mixture into a pre-baked tart crust.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes, brushing the crust with egg white before adding the mixture.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the filling heats, giving the pie its custard structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the orange.
Milk
Provides moisture and a smooth, creamy body to the custard.
Flour
Starch thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Orange
Supplies acidity and bright citrus aroma from the juice and rind.

The step that matters

Thickening in the double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat lets the egg proteins and flour thicken the filling evenly. Too much heat can curdle the eggs and leave the custard grainy, so stir constantly and stop once it is only slightly thickened, since it will firm further as it cools and bakes.

Swap the orange

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

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

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