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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard dessert made with sliced oranges, milk, flour, eggs, and topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Peel and slice the oranges very thin, then place them in a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle enough sugar over the oranges to sweeten nicely.

  3. Let the oranges stand for a while.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, flour, and egg yolks to make a boiled custard.

  2. Allow the custard to cool, then pour it over the oranges, ensuring it is not hot.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix in powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the pudding in the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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 of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and softness.
Flour
Thickens the boiled custard so it holds together when poured over the fruit.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light topping, which browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool before pouring it over the oranges. A hot custard can soften the sliced oranges and cause the topping and layers to separate or turn watery. Cooling it first keeps the pudding set and textured.

Swap the orange

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

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

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