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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie with orange juice and rind, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Beat egg yolks until light.

  2. Add water.

  3. Mix sugar, flour, and salt together, then add the mixture to the egg mixture.

  4. Place mixture in double boiler and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  5. Remove from heat and add butter immediately.

  6. Cool until lukewarm.

  7. Add grated orange rind and orange juice and mix well.

  8. Spread mixture in baked pie shell.

Top and bake

  1. Make meringue with 2 egg whites.

  2. Spread meringue over top of pie.

  3. Place pie in hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  4. Do not heat pie through.

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 cook, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the orange filling as it cooks in the double boiler.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the meringue.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and orange flavor to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the cooked filling.

The step that matters

Do not heat pie through. The filling is already thick and cooked, so only the meringue needs browning. Overheating the custard can make it weep, curdle, or turn watery under the meringue.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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