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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A baked orange and apple custard with pastry lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line the bottom and sides of a baking dish with pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the grated orange rind, butter, and pounded sugar in a bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture until well mixed.

  3. Add the beaten and strained eggs gradually, mixing well.

  4. Scrape the raw apple and mix it into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the orange mixture into the dish and cover with cross bars of pastry.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until set.

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 + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Set the custard-like filling and add richness and structure as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine texture to the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.
Orange rind
Contributes citrus aroma and flavour from the peel's oils.
Raw apple
Adds moisture and a mild tart-sweet flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the eggs gradually. Adding beaten eggs a little at a time while mixing keeps the butter-sugar mixture emulsified; dumping them in at once can cause curdling and a grainy, uneven filling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, apple. 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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