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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with orange zest, juice, eggs, sugar, and butter, baked in pie plates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Grate the rind from the oranges and squeeze the juice.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks one by one.

  3. Add the orange rind and juice to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in pie plates lined with pastry.

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. Sugar + orangetop 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. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps trap air when creamed with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the filling, while whipped whites lighten it and help it set.
Oranges
Rind and juice add aroma and a bright acidity that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. The whites hold air in their foam, which gives the pudding its lightness. Stirring or folding vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently and stop once the mixture is evenly combined.

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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