Sour Orange Pie

I am saving this recipe to try this summer…

On Cooks Country, Bridget confessed to loving lemon meringue pie so much that she has it, rather than cake, on her birthday. But after sampling the show’s version of this north Florida specialty, she said it dethrones lemon meringue. They said the tartness of sour orange means a graham cracker crust isn’t sweet enough so they used animal crackers plus sugar. This sounds to me like unjustified fussifying. The filling will be plenty sweet, and if I wanted to use commercial cookies it would be something good, like Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies or Walkers shortbread. Since sour oranges aren’t widely available, they tested substitutes and settled on OJ concentrate plus fresh lemon juice. The lemon overpowered if normal OJ was used.
Crust: buzz 5oz animal crackers in the food processor, add a pinch salt, 3T sugar, and 4T melted butter, buzz, press in 9" pie pan, 325° 12-14 min, cool.
Filling: 14oz can sweetened condensed milk, pinch salt, 6T EACH lemon juice and OJ concentrate, 1 t lemon zest, 2t orange zest. Into cooled crust, bake 16 min longer.
Top each slice with a dollop of whipped cream. If making your own, add a bit of orange zest.

4 Likes

Oldtimers here and in the Bahamas make it with Ritz cracker crust.

And keep the whipped cream away from it. If you have to put something on it, use meringue.

Whipped cream and (gasp) Cool Whip are foe those who think Key Lime pie is green.

2 Likes

I am a big lemon fan also. This sounds really terrific, and you don’t have to wait to find sour oranges! I’m adding this to try when we get into summer time.

Yum!

Sounds delicious, although I generally use a mixture of orange and lime juice to duplicate the flavor of sour orange.

1 Like

Are sour oranges Sevilles, as I believe we discussed somewhere around the board a while ago?

Seems to be. I learned a lot from the folowing!

https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/sour_orange.html

1 Like

In Florida (and the islands) its typically fruit that grows from below the graft. Sometimes the tree dies after disease or a hard freeze but the hardier root stock survives and eventually bears feuit

1 Like