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Dessert

Orange Pie

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

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

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.

Make the filling

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

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

  3. Add the flour, milk, grated rind, and juice of the orange to the mixture.

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

Bake and top

  1. Pour the thickened mixture into a pie crust brushed with egg white.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg whites and gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  4. Spread or pipe the meringue on top of the pie.

  5. Brown the meringue in the oven for a moment.

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. Milk + eggtop 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
Yolks thicken the filling and whites, whipped with sugar, form the meringue topping.
Milk
Adds moisture and body, giving the filling a creamy, tender texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the whipped egg whites into a meringue.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it sets rather than staying runny.
Orange
Provides the juice and grated rind that give the filling its main flavor and acidity.

The step that matters

Stirring the filling in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken gently with heat; if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too little, it can curdle or scramble. Stirring until only slightly thickened keeps it smooth before baking.

Swap the orange

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

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

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