Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Filling

A sweet orange filling made from grated orange peel, water, sugar, egg yolks, and citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the orange syrup

  1. Grate the yellow rind from the orange peel.

  2. Combine the grated orange peel and ½ cup water in a saucepan.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes and strain.

  4. Add enough hot water to the strained liquid to make ½ cup.

  5. Combine the ½ cup of liquid with 2 cups of sugar in a separate pot.

  6. Boil until it spins a thread.

Finish the filling

  1. Pour the syrup over the well-beaten egg yolks and beat until cool.

  2. Add the juice of ½ orange and the juice of ½ lemon.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness when beaten with the hot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, boiled to a thread, gives it body.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.
Orange
Supplies aromatic oil from the peel and fresh juice for flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup over the egg yolks. The syrup must be hot but poured slowly while beating, so the yolks warm gradually without scrambling. Beating until cool keeps the filling smooth and lets it set to a silky texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, sugar. 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.

More orange filling recipes

Lemon 4Preserved 4 See all 42 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes