Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding flavored with orange segments and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin and custard

  1. Soak gelatin in ½ pint of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Boil 1½ pints of milk.

  3. Beat egg yolks and sugar together, adding a little cold milk to prevent curdling and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the yolk mixture.

  5. Heat the soaked gelatin until it boils.

  6. Set the gelatin aside to cool.

Assemble and top

  1. Peel and segment the oranges.

  2. Pour the custard over the orange segments.

  3. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add 6 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites.

  5. Add 1 teaspoon of orange juice to the egg whites.

  6. Spread the egg white mixture over the top.

  7. Serve.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 custard and add richness and color.
Gelatin
Sets the pudding so it holds its shape when cut.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light topping.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard.
Oranges
Provide the main flavor and fresh fruit texture.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the yolk mixture. Adding hot milk to raw yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding a little cold milk first and pouring the hot milk slowly and steadily while whisking tempers the yolks so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, gelatin. 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 pudding recipes

Lemon 10Baked 5Steamed 5Banana 4 See all 349 →

You might also like

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