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Dessert

Steamed Orange Pudding I

A steamed pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, orange zest and juice, bread crumbs, lemon juice, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Orange Pudding I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour the scalded milk over the bread crumbs and butter; let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, then add the sugar and beat again.

  3. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, grated orange rind, and chopped almonds to the egg mixture; mix well.

  4. Combine the milk mixture with the egg mixture and stir until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold and steam for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with hard sauce.

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. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and set during steaming to give the pudding its structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Soaks into the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture.

The step that matters

Let the milk and bread crumbs stand for 1 hour. The crumbs need time to fully absorb the hot milk and swell; this hydrates the starch and makes a moist, evenly textured pudding instead of a dense or gritty one.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, lemon, bread, egg, almond. 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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