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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with orange rinds, sugar, butter, eggs, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the yellow rinds from the oranges and finely chop them in a mortar.

  2. Mix the chopped rinds with the sugar and unsalted butter.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light, then add to the mixture and combine until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry, ensuring a double rim.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the pastry and bake.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and give it a rich, set texture as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the filling rich and smooth.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Oranges
Provide the citrus flavour and aroma, mainly from the rinds.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the yolks until light before combining. Beating the yolks incorporates air and evenly distributes them, so the filling blends smooth and sets evenly rather than curdling or turning lumpy in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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