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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with oranges, milk, eggs, sugar, and corn starch, topped with a sweet frosted icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces, then sprinkle with ½ to 1 cup sugar.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, corn starch, and ½ teacup sugar.

Make the pudding

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk, stirring until smooth and well cooked.

  2. Once cool, pour the mixture over the oranges.

Frost and chill

  1. Beat the egg whites and add enough sugar to create a thick frosting.

  2. Spread the frosting over the pudding and chill in the refrigerator until ready to 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

Oranges
Provide the main fruit flavor, sweetness and acidity, and moisture from their juice.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness when cooked into the milk.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard becomes smooth and set.
Egg whites
Whip into a thick, airy frosting that tops the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added too fast or without constant stirring. Stirring until smooth and well cooked lets the starch and yolks thicken the custard evenly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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