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Dessert

Orange Cream

A citrus dessert made with lemon, oranges, sugar, cornflour, eggs, and vanilla, topped with whipped egg whites.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cornflour base

  1. Combine 1 pint of water, the juice and pulp of the lemon, and the sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the cornflour moistened with a little water.

  4. Bring to a boil again.

  5. Stir for 10 minutes.

  6. Cool.

Assemble and top

  1. Slice the oranges.

  2. Pour the mixture over them.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Sweeten.

  5. Add vanilla essence.

  6. Pile on top of the oranges.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cornflour
Thickens the lemon and water liquid into a set, spoonable custard.
Eggs
Whites beaten until stiff add a light, airy topping.
Oranges
Provide the fruit base and their juice flavour under the custard.

The step that matters

Stir for 10 minutes. Cornflour must be kept moving while it boils, or it can clump and scorch on the base of the pan. Continued boiling fully gelatinises the starch so the mixture thickens evenly and holds its set when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, egg, vanilla. 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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