Orange Pie

Author: Justin
Serves 8+

6 seedless oranges	1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon	1/4 tsp ginger
pie crust	top crust

Prick the pie crust thoroughly; place pie weight in the bottom if you have them. Prebake it in a 400 oven for 10-12 minutes, to dry it.

Peel oranges, and pick off as much of the white rind as possible. Section them and/or cut them into bite-size pieces, and lay in the crust. Pour the sugar, cinnamon and ginger evenly over top. Lay the top crust on, cut to size and crimp the edges. Prick with a fork. If possible, leave a slight opening between the crusts on one side.

Bake in a 300 degree oven for 50-75 minutes, until the crust is browning slightly. If edges begin to brown prematurely, put a little tinfoil on them halfway through.

Once cooled somewhat, you will find that there is a lot of hot sloshy liquid inside; the oranges lose a huge amount of juice. I find it works best to pour the excess out through the slight opening between the crusts.

Notes and Variations

This recipe is a second try. The first try used only four oranges (large navels); when the oranges cooked down a bit, that proved a bit scrawny. It didn't use a top crust, and wound up without nearly enough crust. Also, the bottom crust wasn't prebrowned, and got very soggy, because the oranges will lose a lot of juice. It didn't use as much cinnamon and ginger, and they were entirely imperceptible. Finally, it only used half as much sugar; the hope is that the increased sugar will lead to a bit of syrup in the bottom, rather than orange juice. (Mind, the first try didn't utterly suck; it just had lots of room for improvement.)

As modified above, the result is quite good. It may be a tad sweet for some tastes, but I like it. Jane thinks it still needs "a little something", so we might want to continue playing with it, but it's probably a reasonably correct reconstruction. However, note that the form of the pie may not be right. The original says nothing about either a top crust or a "coffin" (the usual term for a pie shell); instead, it says to lay the oranges into paste. This may well indicate that it intends this to be made as pasties, instead of pie.

Sources

From A Book of Cookrye, London, 1591. The original reads:

How to bake Orenges.

Faire peele your Orenges, and pick away all the white that is under the peele, and so lay them in fine paste, and put into them Sugar, very little Sinamon or none at all, but a little Ginger and bake them very leisurely.