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Dessert

Orange Pie

A custard pie made with orange juice, rind, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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. In a bowl, mix the orange juice, grated rind, sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch, butter, and milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the baked pie and return to the oven until browned.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Orange + chestnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + chestnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 add richness and a custard-like set.
Cornstarch
Thickens the orange filling so it sets firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the browned meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Orange juice and rind
Provide the citrus acidity and aroma that flavour the filling.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold stiff peaks so the meringue keeps its volume and browns evenly. Under-whipped whites will weep or collapse, and any trace of fat or yolk in the bowl prevents them from foaming properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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