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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard dessert made with oranges, sugar, corn starch, eggs, and milk, baked until browned and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the oranges

  1. Place the oranges in a dish and sprinkle the sugar over them.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, egg yolks, and corn starch to make a custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the oranges.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Spread the stiff egg whites over the custard.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Corn + milktop 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. Egg + milktop 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 fruit base and bright citrus flavor under the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out its juices.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and egg mixture into a set custard.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard; whites whip into a stiff topping that browns.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks, because the air whipped into them gives the topping its light structure. Underbeaten whites will deflate and weep, and any trace of yolk or fat will stop them from whipping well.

Swap the orange

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

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

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