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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A dessert made of oranges, milk, eggs, sugar, and corn starch, topped with a stiff egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the oranges

  1. Peel and cut up the oranges.

  2. Sprinkle the oranges with ½ cup sugar and let stand for 2 hours.

Make the custard

  1. Boil ¾ pint of milk.

  2. Add 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 tablespoon corn starch while stirring. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Pour the cooled mixture over the oranges.

Frost and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites. Gradually add ¼ cup sugar to the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the frosting over the top of the pudding.

  3. Place the pudding in the oven in a pan of cold water until lightly browned.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture as they set with heat, giving the custard body.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the frosting, giving it airy structure and lift.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture when heated, giving the custard a smooth, set texture.
Oranges
Provide the fruit flavour and acidity, and their juice is drawn out by the sugar.

The step that matters

Gradually add ¼ cup sugar to the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Adding sugar slowly while beating helps the whites hold stable, glossy peaks; adding it all at once or with fat present can make them collapse or stay loose.

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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