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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard dessert made with sliced oranges, sugar, egg yolks, corn starch, and milk, topped with beaten egg whites and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

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 custard

  1. Peel and slice the oranges, then layer them in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle 1 cup of sugar over the oranges.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, ½ cup sugar, corn starch, and boiling milk.

  4. Cook until the mixture boils and thickens, then let it cool slightly.

  5. Pour the mixture over the oranges.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little pulverized sugar.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the egg whites.

  3. Spread the flour‑topped egg whites on top of the pudding.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 the fruit base and bright, acidic flavor under the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the custard body.
Egg whites
Beaten to form a light foam that bakes into a browned topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding creaminess and body.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it boils and thickens. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken. Undercooked custard stays thin and runny, so it may not set properly on the oranges.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, corn, milk, flour. 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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