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Dessert

Orange Filling

A sweet orange filling made with sugar, flour, egg, orange rind, orange juice, and lemon juice, cooked in a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix sugar and flour in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten egg, grated orange rind, orange juice, and lemon juice in the order given.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Cool and spread

  1. Cool before spreading.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch cooks.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat and helps thicken and enrich the filling.
Orange juice
Adds fruity flavour and liquid to the filling.
Grated orange rind
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Gentle, even heat and constant stirring keep the beaten egg from scrambling or forming lumps while the flour starch thickens the filling evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, lemon. 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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