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Dessert

Orange Cream

A custard made from oranges, powdered sugar, water, and eggs, thickened over gentle heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Orange Cream

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Peel and squeeze the oranges into a bowl with the powdered sugar and water.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel into a saucepan.

  4. Heat over gentle fire, stirring continuously until thick and scalding hot, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in custard cups or jelly glasses.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Oranges
Provide the juice and flavour that make up the custard's base.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the juice.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the mixture boils, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy, so stir constantly and stop once it is thick and scalding hot.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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