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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with oranges, milk, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, and orange juice, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the peel of the oranges into the milk.

  2. Add sugar and the roll crumb, then bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the eggs and orange juice, then mix well.

  2. Pour into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the other flavours.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the orange.
Roll crumb
Soaks up the milk and thickens into a soft, bready body.
Oranges
Peel gives aroma and juice adds fresh orange flavour and acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs thicken and set when heated, so they need to be mixed in evenly. Too much heat can make them scramble into curds instead of a smooth pudding.

Swap the orange

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

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

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