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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with milk, eggs, butter, orange and lemon, topped with whipped egg whites and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl and mix with corn starch and a little milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk until thickened, then pour over the fruit.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding sugar, and spread over the top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes to harden.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it a smooth body.
Corn starch
Swells in hot milk and thickens the custard so it holds its shape over the fruit.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the yolks and starch thicken.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that forms a light topping which sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg whites and helps them hold their stiff foam.
Oranges
Supply the fruit flavour and acidity that the custard is poured over.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk mixture into the boiling milk. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble or turn lumpy if they get too hot too quickly. Stir steadily while the starch thickens the milk so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn, sugar, lemon, butter, wine. 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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