Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with sliced oranges, milk, eggs, and sugar, topped with beaten egg whites and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges thinly and place them in a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle ¾ cup of sugar over the oranges.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 pint of milk and whisk in 3 egg yolks and ½ cup of sugar to make a soft custard.

  2. Beat the egg whites until light and fluffy, adding a little powdered sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the beaten egg whites over the custard and brown in the oven.

  2. Optionally, bake in a good crust.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oranges
Provide fresh acidity and aroma that balance the sweet custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg whites hold their foam.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets and browns as the topping.

The step that matters

Browning the beaten egg white topping. Beaten egg whites set and brown quickly in heat. Watch them closely so they turn golden without drying out, shrinking, or becoming rubbery, while the custard underneath stays soft.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes