Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Cream for Pudding

A citrus cream made by boiling sugar and orange peel, then adding orange juice, rum, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Cream for Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and orange peel in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the strained juice of the sweet orange and rum, then boil for 3 minutes.

Finish the cream

  1. Beat the mixture into the thick cream until very smooth and nearly 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  4. Rum + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the syrup as it dissolves in the boiling water.
Thick cream
Provides fat and body, giving the finished cream its rich, smooth texture.
Sweet orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the syrup.
Seville orange peel
Infuses the syrup with bitter aromatic oils from the peel.
Rum
Adds aroma and warmth to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Beat the syrup into the cream until very smooth and nearly cold. Cream can split or turn grainy if the syrup is added too quickly or the mixture is warm. Beating gradually while the mixture is cool keeps the emulsion stable and smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum, cream. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes