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Dessert

Orange Pie

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

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. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

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

  3. Cook in a double boiler, stirring until slightly thickened.

Bake and top

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

  2. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Top with meringue made from the egg whites sweetened with 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  4. 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 form the meringue topping, giving structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and the meringue, and helps the meringue hold its shape.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, forming the body of the custard filling.
Orange
Supplies juice and rind for citrus flavour and acidity that cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until slightly thickened. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle them. Gentle stirring in a double boiler keeps the custard smooth while it sets.

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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