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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg yolks, butter, sugar, salt, and oranges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Remove seeds from oranges and sugar them well.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, corn starch, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened.

  3. Pour the custard over the prepared oranges.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Spread them on top of the pudding.

  3. Brown slightly in the oven.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it cooks and gelatinizes in the hot liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the acidity of the oranges.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Starch thickens only when the mixture reaches a full boil and is held there briefly; undercooked custard stays thin, while overcooked egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

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