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Dessert

Fayetteville Orange Pudding

A custard-like orange pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, orange peel, pulp, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fayetteville Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the peel

  1. Boil the peel of the oranges until soft, changing the water 6 to 8 times to prevent bitterness.

  2. Pound the boiled peel in a marble mortar.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, powdered sugar, beaten egg yolks, and pounded peel.

  2. Add the whipped egg whites and the pulp and juice of the oranges to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Line baking pans with puff pastry and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until set.

  3. Once cooled, sprinkle sugar over the top.

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. Butter + sugartop 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff froth, they lighten the filling and help it rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture in the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the butter.
Oranges
Provide the citrus flavor from both the pounded peel and the pulp and juice.

The step that matters

Changing the water while boiling the peel. Bitter compounds in orange peel dissolve into boiling water, so replacing the water several times removes much of the bitterness before the peel goes into the filling.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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