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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard dessert made with orange pieces, sugar, milk, eggs, and corn starch, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Place the orange pieces in a pudding dish.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar, milk, egg yolks, and corn starch.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  5. Cool the mixture slightly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the oranges.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

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 fruit base and bright citrus flavor under the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that bakes into a light, browned topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a set, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture slightly. Pouring a very hot custard onto the beaten egg whites or over the fruit can deflate the foam or thin the layers. Cooling it a little keeps the topping light and the custard stable.

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.

More orange pudding recipes

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